Music from Another Room 1998

On Thanksgiving 1973, five-year-old Danny Kowalski accompanies his doctor father Hank Kowalski to visit Grace Swan Brenda Blethyn, a family friend who is unexpectedly in labor with her fourth child. Because Hank had been enjoying Thanksgiving wine all day, he asks his son to help with the birth. Danny is tasked with using his hands to unwrap the umbilical cord from the baby’s neck. The birth is a joyful win, and the baby girl is named Anna Gretchen Mol. Danny, astonished by the whole event, proudly proclaims > “I’m going to marry her!”

Twenty-five years pass. Danny, now a mosaic tile restorer who hopes to become a master tiler, returns from England to the United States. He moves into a modest apartment above a bakery, taking a delivery job while waiting for his big restoration project to begin. On his first delivery, he gets a bit lost and stops for directions at a house with a distinctive swan bell. The Swan family still lives there, and before Danny leaves, he glimpses elder daughter Nina Jennifer Tilly and the now-grown Anna Gretchen Mol. He finishes the delivery and shares the coincidental sighting with his bakery bosses, who fill him in on the Swans’ story.

Soon, the Swan family orders a cake from the bakery, and Danny heads back to deliver it in the hopes of seeing Anna again. He crashes his bike into a car outside the home and loses consciousness. He wakes up inside the household, meeting Grace Swan Brenda Blethyn and the rest of the family. Nina reveals her lifelong blindness and the fears that keep her from living a normal life. He meets Anna’s father Richard Swan [Bruce Jarchow] and Anna’s sister Karen Swan [Martha Plimpton], while Anna’s fiancé Eric [Jon Tenney] is introduced during a family dinner. When asked what love feels like, Danny offers this: love is like hearing music from another room, so beautiful that you hum along.

Danny takes a new job at the local museum as a mosaic tiler. A few days later, while with Anna again, he asks her to run away with him and marry him; she kindly declines. He confesses his love for Anna to his coworkers, who hand him a two-headed coin and tell him to tell Anna: “Heads you love me, tails I leave you alone.” Danny uses it the next time he is alone with Anna, but she insists on reading the result and calls it tails.

Meanwhile, Danny develops a close friendship with Nina, helping her confront her self-imposed fears. He notices Anna’s caring, motherly way with her siblings and helps her loosen her grip on them. Danny accompanies Nina to a local dance, where she meets Jesus [Vincent Laresca], a young tradesman. Nina and Jesus eventually elope, and Grace is revealed to be dying from an illness. Anna begins to feel something for Danny and rushes to tell Grace that her love is real, but Grace passes away that night. At Grace’s funeral, Anna admits she has told Eric about the affair. Danny says he will leave town in a few days, but he finishes a special wall of tiles—inscribing Anna’s name on it and painting over it in his room as a final act of care. Later, Eric announces that he and Anna will soon move to Paris to marry. Nina grows more certain that Anna belongs with Danny and urges her daughter to pursue him.

The turning point comes when Nina urges Anna to reconsider fate. She takes Anna to the tile wall site where swans have been carved into the surface, bearing a message for Anna. Nina insists that Anna belongs with Danny and encourages her to chase the life she truly wants. At the train station, Anna pleads with Danny to come with her—wherever he goes. Danny answers that this journey might be short, and when Anna offers him a coin, saying that if it lands heads, she will go with him, he covers the coin with his foot and, without looking, declares it lands on heads. The two share a heartfelt kiss, choosing each other in a moment that feels like destiny. > Heads you love me, tails I leave you alone.