Then She Found Me September 15, 2007

Helen Hunt both stars in and makes her debut in the director’s chair with Then She Found Me, a very funny and deeply moving story about the way we create families both by blood and by choice.

April Epner (Hunt) is thirty-nine years old. Her biological clock is not so much ticking as sounding an alarm; her charming but immature husband, Ben (Matthew Broderick), decides their recent marriage is a mistake; and her ailing adoptive mother, whom April has been nursing through her illness, dies. As if this weren’t enough to deal with, a brassy, overbearing local talk-show host named Bernice Graves (a scream of a turn from Bette Midler) shows up out of the blue, announcing herself as April’s biological mother. And she has incredible news: April is the result of a one-night stand Bernice had with Steve McQueen nearly forty years ago.

Devastated on the one hand and bewildered on the other, April finds solace from her rapidly unravelling life in a growing relationship with Frank (Colin Firth), a handsome, warm and suddenly single dad whose wife recently abandoned him and their children. As this new relationship blossoms, April’s general state of confusion gets considerably worse when she finds out that she is pregnant.

Hunt is wonderful as the gentle, determined April, who battles through emotional minefields in order to find herself at peace with the world. As the boisterous Ben, Broderick is all boyish charm, while Firth captures Frank’s stiff upper lip magnificently. And Midler displays characteristic bombast as Bernice, a force of nature who gusts into April’s life and throws it into disarray. Her larger-than-life presence forces April to question her neat, self-made identity, bringing up spectres of the past she had long learned to live without. With Then She Found Me, Hunt combines her glowing screen presence with impressive directorial finesse, marking a new high in an already accomplished career.

Michèle Maheux

Official Website: http://www.tiff07.ca/filmsandschedules/filmdetails.aspx?ID=705021425251386