It's 1950s New Orleans, and a radio soap opera writer (Peter Falk) has run out of overblown plotlines for the show he's been working on. That is, until he meets a hopeless romantic (Keanu Reeves) who's in love with his older, divorced aunt (Barbara Hershey). Casting himself as a master puppeteer of human emotions, the writer manipulates the two for the sake of creating the perfect soap-opera story.