April Epner (Helen Hunt) is a 39-year-old New York schoolteacher who has just married Ben (Matthew Broderick), a long-time friend and fellow educator. She desperately wants to have a baby but things don't go well in that department for her. A series of setbacks throw her for a loop. First, Ben comes to the conclusion that their marriage was a mistake and beats a hasty retreat to his mother's house. Then April's adoptive mother (Lynn Cohen) dies and Bernice (Bette Midler), her biological mother, makes contact with her. In the midst of all this emotional turmoil, April finds a soul mate in Frank (Colin Firth), a recently divorced father whose son is one of her students. He offers her the following advice: "Don't do anything until you've slept. Don't let anybody try to set you up with anyone."

Then She Found Me marks the debut of actress Helen Hunt as a director. The film is based on a 1990 novel by Elinor Lipman in which all of the characters are difficult people with rough edges and foibles. April is a very reserved person. When Bernice, a local talk show host, contacts her to arrange a reunion, she is hesitant to accept. They do meet her for lunch, and it goes very badly thanks to Bernice's aggressiveness in trying to insert herself into April's life. It later turns out that her biological mother has a hard time telling the truth about the circumstances of April's birth. At one point, she learns that her biological father may have been the actor Steve McQueen!

Love seldom happens in the way we expect it to. In fact, expectations are often a big obstacle to accepting the surprises that come our way. The romance that ensues between Frank and April has its rough spots, especially when he discovers that she is pregnant from having sex with her ex-husband shortly before he left her. Frank has trouble with the anger that he carries around inside him against his former wife who cheated on him. And when yet another blow knocks April to the ground, she rages against God until Bernice advises her to accept how difficult the Creator is.

It is easy to sympathize with these idiosyncratic characters as they struggle to find love and a small share of happiness. This drama provides a moving depiction of what E. M. Forster meant when he observed: "We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us."


Special features on the DVD include director's commentary with Helen Hunt; cast interviews and behind-the-scenes; trailer.