Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) is a divorced, 37-year-old ghost writer of a series of young adult novels, who is on deadline with her editor to finish the last book of the soon-to-be-cancelled series. Mavis receives an e-mail with a picture of the newborn daughter of her high school boyfriend Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson) and his wife Beth (Elizabeth Reaser). Believing this to be a sign she and Buddy are meant to be together, Mavis leaves Minneapolis and returns to her hometown of Mercury, Minnesota, to reclaim her life with Buddy, under the pretext of overseeing a real estate deal.

Upon arriving after multiple listens of “The Concept” by Teenage Fanclub on an old mixtape Buddy gave her in high school, Mavis arranges to meet him the next day at a local sports bar, for old times’ sake. In the interim, she goes alone to a different bar, Woody’s…