Then She Found Me

Helen Hunt's directorial debut is a muddled, clouded work - but, one suspects, deliberately so. It is, after all, a story of lives confused and stumbling, based on the novel by Elinor Lipman.

April (Hunt) is a kindergarten teacher, dealing with the death of her adoptive mother (Lynn Cohen) and the tailspin of her marriage to the immature Ben (Matthew Broderick) which has lasted less than a year and clocked up two of the most dispiriting sex scenes ever witnessed at the cinema, landing her pregnant as well.

Into all of this blusters Bernice (Bette Midler), a blowsy, badly-dyed talk-show host who claims to be April's real mother, and Frank (Colin Firth), a divorced father who just might be April's knight in shining armour. There is a bravery to the way Hunt directs - this could have been such a gooey schmaltzfest, after all. But here the humour is kept dry, and the actors never appear dewy-skinned and golden. April looks perpetually gaunt and weary, Bernice borders on the clownish, Ben is a pale little worm and Frank (though exuding a raffish charm) is past his best and prone to bouts of over-emotion.

It works, somehow, not least because Firth here is compelling - the seediness and machismo of his earlier career now giving way to a depth and maturity - and because Hunt is wise enough never to raise the temperature beyond a satisfying slow-burn.  ·