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Movie review: 'Then She Found Me'

Hunt’s directorial debut gracefully negotiates family ties

By Sid Smith

Tribune critic
May 2, 2008

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3 stars (out of four)

Adoption is not a topic overly explored in modern cinema, certainly not with the nuances and honesty in “Then She Found Me,” a modest comedy starring and directed by Helen Hunt.

The Oscar-winning actress plays April, a 39-year-old New York schoolteacher, desperate to have her own child, despite a loving upbringing by her adoptive parents, who later gave birth to their own biological son, Freddy (Ben Shenkman).

April grew up watching what she believes was the more intense bond between her parents and Freddy. That and a somewhat thorny relationship with her bossy mother (Lynn Cohen) engender in her a determination to conceive rather than adopt herself.

But the mission is complicated by, guess what, the man in her life, Ben (Matthew Broderick), her new husband who tells her he wants out. Their break-up doesn’t end their sex life, and six weeks later, after she’s met a new man, Frank (Colin Firth), a divorced father of one of her pupils, April learns she’s pregnant.

Meanwhile, another complication arrives in the form of her own long-absent biological mother. Bernice (Bette Midler) is a successful morning TV talk show host and just about everything April isn’t—loud, overbearing, agnostic (April’s an observant Jew), obnoxiously frank and frankly obnoxious. After making contact, she besieges April with all sorts of tales, some of them tall, including her fey insistence April is her love child from a one-night stand with Steve McQueen.

All this is quite a lot for one domestic comedy, but a strength of “Then She Found Me,” from Elinor Lipman’s novel, is its straightforward, uncomplicated storytelling that keeps the threads untangled and blends the everyday and the absurd with natural ease. There’s a gentle realism that makes room for laughs, drama and the slightest touch of farce, never spilling into the comically cheap and managing to explore subtler issues involving adoption.

In one scene, April, who goes around assuming she merits sympathy as the adopted one, chastises brother Freddy, “You don’t know what it’s like to be adopted.” Opening new honesty between them, he lashes back, “You don’t know what it’s like to not be adopted.” When she asks him to elaborate, he answers, “It’s exhausting” and “sometimes, it’s embarrassing.”

For all their differences, April keeps discovering strange little bonds with her biological mother. Both are hard of hearing in one ear and, as the movie progresses, both turn out to be cool liars. As a director, Hunt isn’t interested in visual artistry, providing the movie a bland, pale look, and she’s better directing herself than the other actors.

But then that provides some memorable scenes. As she lies on the table getting her first ultrasound from her doctor (the unlikely but shrewdly cast Salman Rushdie), she realizes that the strange, mechanical images are her child, and a look takes over her face that can only be described as beatific. Estranged husband Broderick leans over, beaming, and says, “We made a baby.”

By the end, “Then She Found Me” emerges as an entry in the postmodern exploration of family, a unit that’s a patchwork, both natural and gerrymandered, diverse ethnically and religiously and stitched together with all sorts of extended members. That doesn’t make relatives any less combative. But, the movie affirms, that makes them no less loving, either.

sismith@tribune.com