Chichester Cinema at New Park
Then She Found Me
Hunt the auteur is well-served by Hunt the actress in the lead role of April Epner, a 39-year-old New York schoolteacher who's painfully aware of her ticking biological time clock. She's ambivalent about her experiences as an adopted child, and desperate to have a child of her own.
Unfortunately, April's parenting plans are cut short when Ben (Matthew Broderick), her boyishly immature husband of a few months, decides their marriage was 'a mistake.' Just when April's life is returning to an even keel, tragedy strikes. So April is all the more emotionally vulnerable - and, at the same time, warily sceptical - when brassy, self-absorbed Bernice (Bette Milder), a local TV talk show host, introduces herself to April and says she's her biological mother.
That Bernice remains amusing and engaging is a tribute to Midler's shrewd underplaying of a character that could come off as a caricature. The same sort of emotional truth resounds in Firth's portrayal of Frank, a sweet-natured divorced father.
Hunt effectively deglamorizes herself as Alice, often appearing positively gaunt as the schoolteacher steels herself for life's next curveball. At the same time, she conveys nimble intelligence and self-deprecating humour, winning attributes that solidify her claim on audience sympathies.
USA · 2007 · Helen Hunt · 100min
