Then She Found Me

I hadn't heard much about Helen Hunt's directorial debut. I did see Colin Firth on The Daily Show, but he talked a little more about having his man parts photographed in a men's room somewhere in NYC during an intermission of a show than about the film. The clips looked decent, though. Of the film. Not his man parts. Jon Stewart didn't seem to have stock footage of them.

I hadn't heard much about it. I figured nobody else had either, but a line snaked past the concession stand, the water fountain, the bathrooms and up the stairs into the lobby. It doubled back onto itself.

"I didn't expect this many people," the man behind me said after they'd made people shuffle, move closer together, eliminate anything approximating personal space. "Do you think we'll get in?"

"I don't know," I replied. "I've never been farther back than the water fountain."

Neither had he. He tried to figure the number of people in line, those we could see, those we couldn't, the size of the theater and then he gave up. He asked if I'd heard anything about the film.

"No, not really," I said, thinking of the Firth interview.

"The mother?"

"Bette Midler?" I prompted.

"Is she old enough to be Helen Hunt's mother?"

"She did give her up for adoption; she might have been a teen."

Adapted from Elinor Lipman’s novel of the same name, Helen Hunt makes her feature directing debut with Then She Found Me, a story of schoolteacher April Epner (Hunt) and her very unlikely path towards personal fulfillment. Following the separation from her husband (Matthew Broderick) and the death of her adopted mother, April is contacted by her apparent birth mother (Bette Midler), who turns out to be a local talk show host Bernice Graves. As Bernice tries to become the mother to April that she was never able to be, April seems to find solace in the arms of the parent of one of her students (Colin Firth), only to find that the mystery to life’s questions cannot be solved by a simple revelation.

He pondered the teen mother aspect as we talked about ages, movies, free events in DC. A woman came around to collect entries for a mother and daughter spa giveaway. He asked if I'd take him if I won. I laughed nervously, wanting to win and hoping I wouldn't be faced with the choice.

We found seats and figured out the ages, the plots, the interweaving characters, with far too little Firth and absolutely no shots of his man parts. It was complex film, sometimes funny, sometimes not, that made some things look easier than they are and some so much harder. A little like life.

It made me think about everything from relationships to the soundtrack of sex. The movie reiterated that life, that relationships, aren't always easy, between siblings or lovers or parent and child. It reminded me that what we want isn't always what we need and sometimes, we don't get either.

I considered calling my own mother on the way home but couldn't remember her number. I could blame the cell phone age, directories and my frequent phone loss. A half dozen moves in a dozen years for each of us. A familial distrust of the phone as a means of communication. Shifting priorities.

I could blame any of a number of things, most notably myself and my failure as a daughter, but it was complicated. Fitting, given the flick.


Tag: Movies