Then She Found Me

Then She Found Me

Cast: Helen Hunt, Colin Firth, Bette Midler, Matthew Broderick
Director: Helen Hunt
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Rated: MA
Running Time: 100 minutes

Synopsis: Helen Hunt's directorial debut was the hit of the 2007 Toronto Film Festival, with Hunt starring alongside Colin Firth, Bette Midler and Matthew Broderick in 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 (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.

Then She Found Me is produced by Christine Vachon's Killer Films (Boy's Don't Cry, I'm Not There, Far From Heaven) and is based on the book of the same name by Elinor Lipman. 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 largerthan-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.

Release Date: 8th May 2008