Autumn in New York

Will Keane is a successful 48-year-old restaurateur and womanizer. Free-spirited haberdasher Charlotte Fielding celebrates her 22nd birthday in his upscale Manhattan restaurant and he immediately notices her. Her grandmother introduces them. Will learns that Charlotte is the daughter of his ex-girlfriend Katy, who died in a car accident shortly after Charlotte's birth. The next day, Will calls and asks Charlotte to make a hat for his date to an upcoming benefit dinner. When she delivers it to his apartment a few days later, he invites her to accompany him to the formal benefit under the guise that he had been stood up. They get to know each other and become lovers. The next morning while having breakfast on his terrace, Will explains that their relationship has no future. She acknowledges this, revealing she is dying of a heart condition. The next day, they walk through the fall foliage in Central Park, and Charlotte takes Will's watch, saying she will return it when he forgets she has it. At his restaurant, they prepare a meal together for his staff and he begins to fall in love. Back at his apartment, Charlotte has an episode of severe chest pain and Will rushes her to the hospital. The doctor explains that her neuroblastoma, a rare illness in young adults, has produced a tumor near her heart. She is estimated to have only one year to live. At a Halloween party, Will runs into a former girlfriend and they end up on the roof and have sex. Afterward, Charlotte suspects that he was unfaithful, which he at first denies but later admits. Devastated, Charlotte ends their relationship. Will receives a letter from his illegitimate daughter Lisa Tyler whom he has never met. He goes to the museum where she works but finds himself unable to approach her. A few nights later, he finds Lisa in the lobby to his apartment, and they talk for the first time. Married and pregnant, she has become sentimental about parenthood and wanted to meet her own father. She tells him of a recurring dream in which her father says he is sorry for abandoning her. Will quietly asserts that he is sorry. The next night, Charlotte returns home to find Will asleep in a chair in her bedroom. She tells him to leave while he apologizes and pleads for another chance. She cries as he holds her in his arms. Later, while skating at Rockefeller Center, she suddenly collapses. At the hospital, they are told the tumor has grown and she has only a few weeks left. Over the next few days, Will frantically searches for a specialist to perform the complicated surgery to save Charlotte. After he asks Lisa for help, she finds a specialist who agrees to do so. On Christmas morning, Charlotte wakes up and hears Will decorating. As she prepares to bring him his Christmas gift, she collapses. Will rushes her to the hospital and calls the surgeon. Will, friends, Lisa, and Charlotte's grandmother wait during the long hours of surgery. When the specialist emerges from the operating room, it is clear that he could not save her. Back at his apartment, Will finds Charlotte's Christmas gift to him on the floor—a small box with the hat stem she designed for him. Opening the box, he finds his watch she took from him on their first date. He stands at his window weeping with the box to his chest. The following summer on a small boat on Central Park Lake, Will is holding his newborn grandson in his arms as Lisa looks on lovingly. He notices a swan and then a reflection in the water of a woman walking over the bridge.

Plot from Autumn in New York (film)CC BY-SA 4.0