Yes, we will admit it, we're suckers when it comes to believing in the magical nature of synchronicity, which Phil Cousineau describes as "an inexplicable but profoundly meaningful coincidence that stirs the soul and offers a guiding glimpse of one's destiny." Lovers can be drawn together in chance encounters and experience bliss. "Luck was with me. / I walked arm in arm / with Joy," is the way Pablo Neruda puts it in Odes to Opposites.

Jonathan (John Cusack), a producer of a sports show, bumps into Sara (Kate Beckinsale) in Bloomingdale's five days before Christmas. They discover they have the same object of desire: a pair of black cashmere gloves. Although they are each involved with another person, they cannot ignore their mutual attraction.

Jonathan and Sara spend an enchanted evening together eating at a restaurant, ice skating in Central Park, and tempting fate at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Sara, an Englishwoman with a wry sense of humor, suggests that if they are really meant for each other, they'll connect again. So he sends out his name and number on a five dollar bill, and she puts hers inside a novel.

Ten years later, Sara is in San Francisco and Jonathan is in New York. They are both about to marry others but they still wonder whether destiny will bring them back into each other's arms at the last moment. With the help of his best man Dean (Jeremy Piven), Jonathan launches a last-ditch attempt to locate Sara. She, meanwhile, flies to Manhattan with her best friend Eve (Molly Shannon) to see if she can find Jonathan.

Peter Chelsom directs this romantic comedy from a clever screenplay by Marc Klein. Serendipity makes charming use out of Manhattan and there is an entertaining lightness to the frantic efforts of these two lovers to re-connect. Of course, the joke is on them for the real matchmaker is fate/destiny/God. As Jean Shinoda Bolen has put it: "Every time I have become aware of a synchronicity experience, I have had an accompanying feeling that some grace came along with it."