On a flight to Sydney, sports announcer and former football star Mike Gambril Warren Beatty meets singer Terry McKay Annette Bening, each of them engaged. Their plane malfunctions and makes an emergency descent, and the two comfort one another as the aircraft makes an emergency landing on a remote atoll. The passengers wait for rescue from nearby ships, unsure how long they’ll be stranded.
As Mike gets comfortable with the boat he’s leaving on—a Russian cruise ship—Terry boards the vessel when her own ship is redirected elsewhere. The atmosphere grows tense as the crew’s revelry escalates; many passengers drink heavily, and Mike and Terry come close to an intimate moment, only to be interrupted by the chaotic party atmosphere. The next morning, nursing a hangover, Terry insists she doesn’t want to ruin her life with a fling and tries to steer the conversation away. Yet Mike persists, inviting her to visit his elderly Aunt Ginny on the island of Moorea during a routine stopover. Aunt Ginny Katharine Hepburn welcomes them with warmth, and the afternoon they spend together—sharing a meal, listening to music, and simply talking—softens Terry’s reservations and deepens the connection between them.
Rather than taking a direct jet back to their separate worlds, they decide to prolong their romance on the boat for several more days, savoring a setting that feels almost dreamlike. When they eventually head home toward New York, they agree to reunite at the top of the Empire State Building in three months’ time to test their convictions and the paths their lives have taken. In the interim, Terry ends her engagement with Pierce Brosnan as does Mike with his fiancée, Lynn Weaver, choosing to redefine what they want from life and love.
Terry launches a career as a singer, mostly doing advertising work, while Mike faces an existential crisis about his TV career. He quits television and takes a job as the head coach at a small college. A poignant thread throughout is a portrait he paints of Terry in prayer, wearing his aunt’s hand-made shawl—the image that ties their island day to the rest of their evolving choices.
Months pass, and while on the way to their scheduled rendezvous, tragedy strikes: Terry is struck by a car while jaywalking and is gravely injured, rushed to the hospital. Mike waits for her at the observation deck of the Empire State Building, enduring hours of rain before admitting to himself that she has rejected him.
Now unable to walk, Terry declines to contact Mike and instead begins a new life as a music teacher at a small elementary school. Six months later, she sits beside her former boyfriend, Ken Allen, at a holiday concert featuring Ray Charles, while Mike is there with his former fiancée, barely noticing her in the crowd.
On Christmas Eve, Mike makes a surprise visit, claiming to have found Terry’s address while looking up another name in the directory. He tries to coax her to talk about their past, but she remains largely still, resting on the couch. He reminds her that Aunt Ginny left him the shawl and that he once painted a portrait of her wearing it. He notes the painting was given to a woman who admired it and is about to reveal that the woman was in a wheelchair when he suddenly stops, realizing that Terry isn’t moving. He steps into her bedroom, finds the painting hanging on the wall, and finally understands why she never kept their appointment: she chose a life where she could no longer rise to meet him, even when love endures.
