Plot Summary
17-year-old Manhattan student Lisa Cohen (Anna Paquin), shopping on the Upper West Side, interacts with bus driver Gerald Maretti (Mark Ruffalo) as she runs alongside his moving bus; he allows himself to become distracted, leading to a fatal accident, in which a pedestrian (Allison Janney) is hit by the bus and subsequently dies in Lisa's arms. In collaboration with the victim's best friend, Emily, and cousin, Abigail, Lisa ultimately becomes involved in a wrongful death lawsuit against the Metropolitan Transit Authority, seeking the dismissal of the driver (who is revealed to have caused two previous accidents), as well as monetary damages, which would be awarded to the victim's next of kin, her cousin. Meanwhile, Lisa's life takes various turns, including a flirtation with her math teacher, Aaron Caije (Matt Damon), her decision to lose her virginity to a school friend and various vehement debates about politics and terrorism with classmates.
Lisa and her actress mother have a rocky relationship, with sporadic fighting and Lisa expressing ambivalence toward her mother's boyfriend Ramon (Jean Reno). An after-show dinner, attended by Lisa, her mother, Emily and Ramon, ends with Ramon making a remark perceived as antisemitic toward Emily. Ramon dies of a heart attack not long afterward.
After Lisa's sexual encounter with her classmate (Kieran Culkin), and a subsequent one with her math teacher, she discovers she is pregnant and has an abortion. Lisa confronts Caije, telling him of the abortion in the presence of another teacher. She expresses doubt about who the father was and mentions that there are two possibilities.
Lisa confronts bus driver Maretti, who first pretends to have forgotten the details of the accident, and then reveals to her in anger that he does remember them, but believes he did nothing wrong, causing Lisa to pursue his firing from the company with more passion.
The lawsuit reaches a conclusion, with an award of $350,000, but the MTA refuses to fire Maretti, out of concern that it would inflame a labor dispute. The victim's cousin, Abigail, claims the settlement offer, revealing the monetary settlement to have been her primary motivation; this causes Lisa to become very upset and disillusioned with the outcome of the case.
Lisa and her mother plan to attend an opera that Ramon and she were to see before his death. On the way, Lisa sees Maretti driving the same bus that had killed the pedestrian and there is a brief moment where the two see each other. During the opera performance, Lisa's accumulated emotion from the sequence of events bursts out and she and her mother affectionately reconnect, crying together and holding each other as the opera goes on.
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