When a performer turns to directing and makes a film with him- or herself as the star, it’s often seen as a vanity project. You be hard pressed to level that accusation against Helen Hunt, who directs and stars in Then She Found Me. (She also co-wrote the script, adapted from a novel by Elinor Lipma, and such are the Byzantine rules of the Writer’s Guild that her name is presented twice under the credit for the film’s writer.) Playing April Epner, a 39-1/2-year-old woman suffering more stress than any one person should have to endure at one time, the 44-year-old actress goes out of her way to look the part. April looks drawn, haggard, and underweight, all of which work to make her character seem vulnerable. When an actor like Robert DeNiro does this kind of thing, he’s applauded for his dedication to his craft. But when an actress does it, she’s derided for looking bad, as if there were a law requiring Botox and facelifts for anyone over 27.

End of rant. April’s problems only begin with the end of her brief marriage to Ben (Matthew Broderick), a nebbish who teaches at the same elementary school as her. She is desperate to get pregnant, more so as her adoptive mother tries to persuade her to adopt a child from China. “There’s no difference,” she says, but April hasn’t believed that since her mother gave birth to a brother after adopting her: She wants the feeling that she saw in her eyes.

April’s life becomes more unsettled when she is approached by a woman claiming to be her birth mother. Such a situation is one which I suspect an adoptee would want to approach with delicacy and sensitivity. You will understand the degree to which these qualities are denied when you learn that that said birth mother is played by Bette Midler.

Throw in Colin Firth as a father having just as much trouble coming to grips with life after his own divorce and you have all the ingredients for a broad romantic comedy. But that’s not quite the kind of movie that Then She Found Me is. While it’s frequently funny, the characters’ painful emotions are never played for laughs. The cast is uniformly excellent, with Midler and Firth particularly good at bringing reality to difficult characters. The story takes a few odd turns in the third act, of the sort that work better in a novel than a film, but overall Then She Found Me shows Hunt to be an empathetic director with an interest in probing complex lives.

—m. faust