That an Oscar winner like Helen Hunt needs to write, produce and direct her own low-budget indie in order to concoct a decent star vehicle for herself suggests that Hollywood maintains its traditional antipathy to stories involving women over the age of 22. Given these circumstances, Then She Found Me seems more novel than it ought to be, given that it’s an otherwise conventional blend of rom-com and middlebrow drama. Yet it’s also invigorated by appealing performances (including a rare outing by Bette Midler) and Hunt’s willingness to travel into rougher emotional terrain than a studio might’ve permitted.

She plays April Epner, a schoolteacher who’s shocked when her long-anticipated marriage to boyfriend Ben (Matthew Broderick) abruptly collapses. April’s life is further complicated by a dramatic meeting with her birth mother (Midler), a potential romance with a similarly heartbroken divorcé (Colin Firth) and the ticking of her biological clock. Undercurrents of anger and anxiety lend some authenticity to exchanges and events that might’ve seemed overly contrived. Equally welcome is the notion — a rare one for movies targeted at Oprah’s demographic — that not all of a woman’s problems can be solved by a nice new guy and/or a house in Tuscany.