Then She Found Me (2008)

The move from actor to director can be a difficult one, but actress Helen Hunt makes the transition seem effortless with THEN SHE FOUND ME. Hunt, who also produced and cowrote the film, plays April Epner, a down-on-her-luck schoolteacher who longs to have a child. April's chances of bringing a baby into the world are diminished when her husband, Ben (Matthew Broderick), leaves her, and more bad news follows when her adoptive mother dies. The beleaguered April subsequently forms an unexpected bond with her real mother, the overbearing TV host Bernice (Bette Midler), and takes tentative steps towards motherhood with a new man in her life, the bumbling Frank (Colin Firth).

Hunt's film, which is based on the novel of the same name by Elinor Lipman, is likely to win over fans of classic rom-coms such as WHEN HARRY MET SALLY and YOU'VE GOT MAIL. At its heart the film poses some thoughtful observations on what a late-30s woman goes through when she is facing a possibly childless future. But Hunt also stirs some generous scoops of humor into the plot, providing light relief from her central character's plight, and also demonstrating her range as a writer/director. The cast members are uniformly excellent throughout, with Firth and Hunt giving strong performances that are helped along by a supporting cast that provides most of the comic relief. Hunt even finds time to provide a small role for the writer Salman Rushdie, who plays a doctor.