Gigot, William H. Macy, is an alcoholic, disgruntled hearing-mute who works as the superintendent of a bustling New York City apartment building, where a cast of eccentric tenants keeps life anything but ordinary. One day, he meets Lou, Keke Palmer, a sharp-witted young girl who lives with her mother Arlene, Cherise Boothe, and her boyfriend Bernard. When Gigot suspects a break-in at their place, he investigates and inadvertently stumbles into trouble as two thugs close in on the couple. His interference creates a diversion that lets Lou slip away to the basement with her mother, and, despite Gigot’s protestations, Arlene entrusts Lou to his care for an indefinite stretch while she tries to straighten things out with Bernard.
From there, Gigot’s stubborn solitude collides with Lou’s fearless but anarchic energy. Lou’s brash, back‑talking demeanor irks him, while his own stark, Spartan lifestyle—no food in the apartment, frequent drinking, and emotional distance—feels like an opposing universe. His only apparent friends are Grace, his pet monkey, and Gloria, a middle‑aged prostitute who circles the building’s world with a hard-won gentleness. Desperate to place Lou with a relative, Gigot learns from the lease that an aunt named Cheryl lives in Philadelphia. They hop a bus to try to convince Cheryl to take Lou in, only to discover that Cheryl and Arlene are enemies and that Cheryl herself won’t treat Lou as a relative.
With options narrowing, Gigot and Lou chase another path, researching one of Arlene’s contacts who points them toward a different apartment building—a place that turns out to be a crack house. There, Gigot confronts the grim realization that Arlene has spiraled into drug addiction. Facing a dead end, he returns home with Lou, only to be robbed at a diner and forced to stage a small-sided show featuring Grace and Lou to scrape together enough money for bus tickets back toward a possible future.
In the wake of these trials, a fragile bond forms between them. Lou’s influence begins reshaping Gigot’s life: he starts to curb his drinking and takes seriously the fact that Lou is almost illiterate and two years older than her classmates. A father-daughter dynamic blossoms as Lou helps Gigot confront his own grief and emotions, especially after Grace is poisoned in a revenge act tied to the drugs Gigot once disposed of. When police visit and reveal that Arlene died of an overdose, Gigot wrestles with how much to shield Lou from hard truths, eventually telling her during a trip to a theme park. Her heartbreak triggers a new wave of responsibility in Gigot, who seeks out Clarence, a Vietnam veteran who has become a foster parent for many homeless children, hoping for guidance.
Clarence and his wife Bess, however, announce retirement, leaving Gigot to stand in as a foster parent himself after Child Protective Services arrives to claim Lou. His bid to become a foster parent is thwarted by a stretch of bad luck and bureaucratic hurdles, including a jail sentence that prevents him from being a candidate and a marriage proposal to Gloria that is refused. The search for a stable family culminates in a painful turn: Gigot’s aging parents, whom he hasn’t seen in 28 years, hold the key to Lou’s future, but the truth of his family history is not easy to swallow. He discovers that his mother is dead, his father has remarried, and years of isolation and drinking—rooted in survivors’ guilt from his Vietnam days—have shaped who he has become. The wool cap that Gigot wears throughout the movie—belonging to his younger sister, who died in a car accident when he was driving under the influence—embodies the weight of his past. When his father rejects his appeal to adopt Lou, the scene marks a turning point in Gigot’s inner life.
Meanwhile, Lou’s time in the foster system grows heavy. The stress and struggle take their toll, and she ends up in juvenile hall after a shoplifting episode, shutting herself off from Gigot as she believes a home may never be found. On Christmas Day, Gigot tries to release the past, letting his sister’s wool cap drift away in a river as a symbolic, quiet gesture of letting go. Yet the moment of upheaval also brings a glimmer of reconciliation when his stepmother and father appear at the apartment building, and he reaches out to them with a renewed sense of possibility. After a brief hesitation, Gigot and his father embrace, signaling a potential repair of their fractured relationship.
In a pivotal, tender moment, Gigot visits Lou at juvenile hall and uses sign language to tell her that he would like to adopt her. Lou, mirroring his own quiet ascent, responds with a wordless, hopeful silence, accepting the offer in her own way. The story then jumps forward a year, into a winter that finds Gigot guiding his father’s business and picking up Lou from school, where she has grown into a bright, capable student. The two ride away together, laughter returning to their lives as they begin to build a new family, rooted in mutual care, shared history, and the quiet strength of found belonging.
