It's fitting that Then She Found Me opens with a joke, and even more fitting that it's a Jewish joke, not that the movie has much to do with anything Jewish. I won't spoil the punch line, but the gag (which hinges on a father watching his son fall flat on his face) is a pretty good example of the droll blend of comedy and tragedy typically found in Jewish humor — a perspective that sounds a lot like what the movie has in mind for itself and us.
Based on Elinor Lipman's 1990 novel, Then She Found Me is the directorial debut of Helen Hunt, who also stars in the film, and it's one of those movies people these days like to call a "dramedy." Hunt's movie seems balanced on a finer line than we're used to seeing in these kinds of films, however, and even the actress-director's face seems in on the game; age and gravity have tugged so furiously on the corners of the former Mad About You star's mouth that she now looks heartbroken even when smiling, as if the twin masks of comedy and tragedy were somehow simultaneously inhabiting the same face.
Hunt's still attractive mug is sometimes so distressed it's painful to look at it, but it's just right for April Epner, a 39-year-old schoolteacher with a ticking biological clock and various other issues. April's marriage has ended almost before it's begun, complicating her burning desire to have a baby, and she won't consider adoption because of her own issues with being an adopted child. Meanwhile, April's mother has suddenly died, a local talk-show host (Bette Midler) has crawled out of the woodwork to reveal herself as April's birth mother, and the divorced father (Colin Firth) of one of her students has begun flirting with her scant hours after the break-up of her marriage.
All of this plays out in some nebulous zone midway between melodrama and sitcom, as the movie ricochets back and forth between April's developing relationships with the brassy TV celebrity who claims to be her mom and the handsome single dad positioning himself as her new suitor. Firth finds himself once again cast as Mr. Sensitive, a strong but sympathetic male who casts insouciant wit to the wind just long enough to look deep into Hunt's eyes and claim he "knows" her — and, more importantly, accepts her, flaws and all. "This moves me," he confides on their first date, a devastating eruption of sincerity in the midst of a torrent of clever, carefree conversation. "You move me."
Things develop way too quickly between April and her sensitive hunk (a chick-flicky flourish not in Lipman's book but added by Hunt), and the happy couple are soon snuggling up together, while simultaneous bonding proceeds apace between Hunt's character and her presumptive mother. A series of improbable plot twists follows in even more rapid succession, as everything falls apart before coming together again — but while the movie flirts mightily with formula and shtick, it never completely gives in to either.
Then She Found Me makes plenty of mistakes, but the performances (particularly Hunt's and Midler's) give the characters weight, and the balance between bitter and sweet is generally a fairly effective one. The humor may not always crack us up, but at least it's not dumbed down, and even when the rapid-fire dialogue sounds so pleased with itself that you'd swear you were sitting through a dinner-theater adaptation of The Gilmore Girls, Hunt can usually be counted on to temper it with something worthwhile. At one point we even get a cameo by Salman Rushdie as a frazzled obstetrician, and then all is forgiven.
Comedy also collides with something more serious in the South African import Bunny Chow, although the results are even more problematic than in Hunt's film. The movie is full of fascinating local color and refreshingly free of the tortured rooting around in racial and political tensions that we might expect to see in a film from South Africa. But the good-natured Bunny Chow is also surprisingly dull and not particularly funny, especially considering that its three main characters are rising young stand-up comics, all of whom spend as much time squabbling with their girlfriends as they do telling jokes.
Real-life comedians David Kibuuka, Kagiso Lediga and Joey Rasdien play slightly fictionalized versions of themselves (named, appropriately enough, David, Kag and Joey), and the movie follows these 20-something pals as they hop in a beat-up car and travel from Johannesburg to Oppi Koppi to perform at an outdoor festival. Bunny Chow dutifully records the characters' road trip, occasionally cutting away to the girlfriends at home, but nothing particularly interesting happens on either front.
Director John Barker basically just gives his performers plenty of room to improvise, but no one seems very comfortable on the screen, and the film's loosely structured scenario incorporates set-ups we've seen many times before.
The inspiration here is clearly the early independent films of directors like Spike Lee and Jim Jarmusch — the movie is shot handheld and in crisp black-and-white that proudly proclaims itself an arty indie — but Bunny Chow adheres to the form without much of the vision, energy or originality that made those films memorable. Even the film's title, referring to a regional curry sandwich symbolizing the "melting pot that is Johannesburg," feels derivative of too many other movies, beginning with every Indian film that ever contained the word "masala" in its title.
This article appears in May 21-27, 2008.