Hope Springs

Hope Springs is a 2003 romantic comedy film written and directed by Mark Herman, based on the novel New Cardiff by Charles Webb. The film stars Colin Firth as Colin, an English painter who travels to the town of Hope, Vermont, in the United States after a traumatic experience. There, he meets Mandy (Heather Graham), a nursing home worker who helps him get over the break-up between him and Vera (Minnie Driver). Plot English artist Colin is dumped by his childhood love and fiancée Vera, so he travels to a place with the most positive name he can find. He arrives in Hope, a quiet town in Vermont in autumn, and showing clear signs of emotional distress, checks into an inn. Colin tries to forget his troubles by sketching the eccentric town residents. When he asks for "rubbers" instead of erasers at a store, it causes the small-town locals to go on alert. The casual request embodies cultural differences with Americans and Brits and causes some misunderstandings between them. When Joanie, the quirky and outlandish hotel manager, sees his state she calls over her friend Mandy, a nursing home attendant, to talk with him and take his mind off his troubles. Everyone in town all know each other and have boring predictable lives, but by bringing Colin and Mandy together, Joanie and the other Hope residents add some romance and drama to their own lives.