Rhoda Williams (Brit Marling) is a high school student who has been recently accepted to MIT. She celebrates with friends and drives home intoxicated. Listening to a story about an approaching planet that looks just like Earth on the radio, she looks out her car window up to the stars and inadvertly slams her car through a stopped car at an intersection, putting John Burroughs (William Mapother) in a coma and killing his wife and son. Rhoda is a minor, so her identity is not revealed to John. After serving her prison sentence, Rhoda does not go to MIT, but becomes a janitor at a local school, wanting to physically clean things with her hands but not do too much thinking.After cleaning a school for a while and hearing more news stories about the approaching mirror Earth, Rhoda visits John's house after he has recovered, thinking she will apologize for the harm she did to him. He answers the door and she loses her nerve. Instead, she pretends to be a maid offering a free day of cleaning as a marketing tool for Maid'n Haven (a New Haven based maid service). John, who has nearly dropped out of his Yale music faculty position and is now living in a depressed and dirty stupor, agrees to Rhoda's offer. When she finishes, John, who still does not know she is the person who killed his wife and son, asks her to come back next week. Rhoda tells him someone will come, but it may not be her.Rhoda returns to clean and develops a caring relationship with John that eventually becomes more significant and romantic. They like each other and are intelligent and compatible conversationally. Rhoda genuinely wants to be of service to him.Rhoda enters an essay contest sponsored by a millionaire entrepreneur who is offering a civilian space flight to the approaching mirror Earth. Rhoda's essay is selected and she is chosen to be one of the first explorers to travel to the other Earth. Rhoda tells John she has won the space flight, but he asks her not to go. However, when she tells him that she was the one who killed his wife and son, he forces her out of his house.Rhoda hears in a telecast the citizens of the mirror Earth were identical to those on her Earth in every way until the moment they learned of the other's existence. From that point on, the identical people on the different Earths probably began to deviate in small ways, changing their actions. Rhoda hopes her identical self on the other Earth did not make the mistakes she made on the night of the accident.Rhoda returns to John and gives him the ticket to the other Earth, telling him enough information to give him a small hope that his wife and son might be alive on that planet. John accepts the gift and becomes one of the first civilian space travelers to the other Earth.Months later, Rhoda approaches her back door and sees her twin from the other Earth standing in front of her.
Who plays Rhoda Williams?
Brit Marling