"Maggie (Greta Gerwig) is a young single woman in Brooklyn who is determined to have a baby on her own through a surrogate. However, she meets John (Ethan Hawke), an attractive, older university professor, caught in an unhappy marriage, and they start a relationship. Maggie's rejuvenating enthusiasm lures John away from his wife, the domineering Danish critical theorist Georgette Norgaard (Julianne Moore). The film moves forward three years and the couple have married and settled down with a daughter together. Everything has gone according to Maggie's plan, so why isn't she happy? And what sort of meddlesome scheme will she concoct next? Maggie's Plan, based on an unpublished novel by Karen Rinaldi, is both an affectionate send-up of highbrow academic culture and a treatise on modern self-realization. Rebecca Miller exhibits her characteristic sensitivity to female experience, but with a playfulness given freer rein than ever before in her work."