Hope Floats - Plot

Plot

Birdee Pruitt (Sandra Bullock) is a Chicago housewife who is invited onto a talk show under the pretense of a free makeover. The makeover she is given is hardly what she has in mind...as she is ambushed with the revelation that her husband Bill has been having an affair behind her back with her best friend Connie. Humiliated on national television, Birdee and her daughter Bernice (Mae Whitman) move back to Birdee's hometown of Smithville, Texas with Birdee's eccentric mother Ramona (Gena Rowlands) to try to make a fresh start. As Birdee and Bernice leave Chicago, Birdee gives Bernice a letter from her father, telling Bernice how much he misses her.

Birdee struggles to make a new life for herself as a working single mother and must deal with the growing attraction between herself and a former high school classmate, Justin Matisse (Harry Connick, Jr.). She also must deal with rebuilding her relationship with her estranged mother, her ailing father (who suffers from Alzheimer's Disease), and her daughter, who wants desperately to be with her father and blames her mother for the breakup, even going so far as to try to sabotage the romantic overtures Justin makes towards Birdee.

Adding to Birdee's heartache is her former status as the school queen bee and a three-time beauty pageant winner, alienating many of her former classmates who have never left Smithville or have left and returned. They also haven't forgotten Birdee's high school snobbery and rub her nose in her televised embarrassment from her husband and former friend.

Ramona tries to mend the gap between her daughter and granddaughter by telling a story about the importance of family if hope is to come alive through a childhood story of her own. She asks Bernice what she's wishing for her birthday. Though Bernice doesn't say it, she secretly wishes for her father to return.

That night, as Ramona is preparing for bed, she suffers a massive heart attack and drops her cup of tea. This alerts Birdee and she rushes to her mothers' side trying to wake her up, but Ramona dies.

At the funeral, Bill arrives at the church, joining the large crowd of mourners for Ramona. Bernice believes that her father's presence is a sign that her wish has come true...that her father wants them both to come home and life will be the same as it was in Chicago. She murmurs a thank you to her deceased grandmother.

Bernice, who has long been the apple of her father's eye, is dealt a hard blow of reality, when it becomes clear to her that her parents' split is permanent when Bill asks Birdee for a divorce. Wanting to be with her father, Bernice is devastated when he tells her that though he loves her, he has no room for her in his new life with Connie. Bernice tries to beg her father to bring her along, knowing how much he wanted her in the letter he wrote to her at the start of the film. Crushed at the thought that her father put another woman before her, Bernice breaks down sobbing, screaming for him to come back. Bill turns his back on her and drives off, leaving her to be comforted by her mother.

Bernice ultimately accepts Bill's departure from her life as a full-time parent, and begins to accept Justin as her mother's new love interest and a father figure. Both mother and daughter share a tender yet humorous moment when Bernice asks Birdee if she's going to marry Justin. When Birdee asks her if she means she doesn't like Justin, Bernice says her only real concern is being known as "Bernice Matisse."