Then She Found Me
by Robert Hammerle
Posted: Jun 06, 2008
“Then She Found Me” is a tender, moving little film that stars Helen Hunt, who also directs. While there is nothing unique about its story of a thirty-nine-year-old teacher whose personal life is collapsing while she hears her biological clock ticking, it is so undeniably warm and genuine that you can’t help but wrap your arms around it.
What was so refreshing about this film is that all of the principal characters are real, true to life people. No matter how desperate the circumstance, there is simply no quit in any of them.
Ms. Hunt is devastating as a middle-aged woman whose hope of having a child is brutally interrupted when her mousy husband (the always mousy Matthew Broderick) of less than a year announces that he has made a mistake and wants a divorce. Her emotional turmoil is only heightened by the subsequent death of her adopted mother.
Ms. Hunt is physically startling as she descends into depression and confusion. A primary grade school teacher, she is as shockingly drawn and thin as her hair is stringy and without form. I have seldom seen an actor, particularly a female, courageous enough to appear in a film looking so emotionally haggard.
But her chaos is only complicated by both the sudden appearance of her birth mother, played to perfection by Bette Midler, and a would be suitor (Colin Firth) with two young children who is almost as psychologically damaged as she is.
But what sounds like a maudlin tale is anything but. Hunt is marvelous as she tries to deal with a mother she has never seen; a soon to be ex-husband who is more of a child than a man; a new love who may be more in need of Prozac than herself, and a sudden pregnancy that merely adds fuel to a fire burning out of control.
Hunt carries herself with a grace that never permits the chaos of her life to damage her soul. Bette Midler has never been better as the quirky, perfidious mother who is trying to establish a relationship with a daughter that she gave away in infancy. She is as funny as she is outrageous. In a phrase, she is “The Divine Ms. M.”
There is something truly special about the performance of the always reliable Colin Firth. As he proved in “Nanny McPhee” (2006); “Love Actually” (2003) and “Bridget Jones Diary” (2001), he is one of the few actors today who can make simple decency both manly and sexy.
On the other hand, Matthew Broderick continues to portray a man who is as weak as he is pathetic. In reality, his role as the soon to be ex-husband of Ms. Hunt could have been drawn straight out his character as accountant Leo Bloom in “The Producers” (2000) or his school teacher in “Election” (1999). Quite frankly, he is one of the few actors who could give the term “Mama’s boy” a bad name.
Ms. Hunt, Mr. Firth and Ms. Midler persevere because they inherently know that the failure to do so is to quit living. As Woody Allen so wonderfully described in his academy award winning “Annie Hall” (1977), truly unhappy people in life are the ones who don’t understand the options. Human beings must choose between the horrible and the miserable. There is no alternative that can be described as “happy.”
This movie is about the persistence of little people who fight through their profound dilemmas. Felling sorry for yourself is not an option. With kudos to the illustrious Mr. Allen, they recognize in the end that despite their misery, they are happy because they are not horrible.
