Then She Found Me (2007)

Directed by Helen Hunt. Starring Helen Hunt, Bette Midler, Colin Firth, Matthew Broderick, Ben Shenkman, John Benjamin Hickey, Lynn Cohen, Salman Rushdie. [R]

Hunt makes her co-writing, co-producing and directing debuts with this loose adaptation of a same-named Elinor Lipman novel. She plays a devout Jewish woman who’s nearing forty but wants to have a child, and in quick succession, her adoptive mother dies and her husband (Broderick) suddenly leaves her. This opens the door for the appearance of a vivacious woman (Midler) claiming to be her birth mom and a romance with single dad Firth, but it’s never so simple as that in these kinds of seriocomedies—Broderick comes back into her life at a most inconvenient time, for one, and for another, Midler is anything but trustworthy, coming right out the gate with the claim that Hunt’s birth father is actor Steve McQueen! Hunt’s filmmaking instincts are timid and obligatory, hitting each “big” moment with dutiful awareness, restraining the cast from indulging in theatrics to push the material into sheer melodrama (Midler’s trademark brassiness can’t be corralled entirely, however, but instead of injecting energy into her scenes, she comes off so insincere and undependable, it’s hard to believe the reticent protagonist wouldn’t jettison the woman from her life). Although the conspiratorial contrivances of later occurrences aren’t belabored, one does get a sense of circumstances being forced toward the bittersweet, open-ended opening that’s expected from these “sophisticated” indie dramas—her religious heritage is integrated into her character with such confusion, it almost become a dramatic prop—but the solemnity and earnestness make it hard to dismiss the film entirely, as one gets the feeling it could’ve been a lot worse. Indeed, that’s a vaguely unsatisfying sentiment for a vaguely unsatisfying movie.

49/100