Then She Found Me
Directed by Helen Hunt

There is a fault line running through America, a chasm so vast that it cannot be bridged. It is not the divide between the Hillary voter and the Obama voter, or between the red state and the blue state. These are rifts that can be healed. The same may not be said for the gap between the average male moviegoer and the phenomenon known as the "chick flick."

The problem, quite simply, is goo. The average male moviegoer likes literal, actual goo--stuff that oozes, especially Karo syrup dyed red to look like blood. The depiction of such goo provokes a visceral thrill. He cannot, however, abide emotional goo, by which I mean scenes intended to provoke a sentimental response, especially if those scenes involve children, relationships, or disease.

The depiction of that kind of goo leaves our male moviegoer in a state of frantic unease, comparable to the most dreadful moment he can imagine: that moment when the woman in his life says, "I think we need to talk about our relationship." He would rather go to the dentist than live through any sort of evocation of that confrontation with direct and unambiguous feeling.

It may be true that women are now better educated than men, that women in the middle and upper-middle classes may either be at parity in salary, or edging ahead. But there is one thing women cannot do, and that is to get their significant male others to attend a movie laden with

This is why there are so few chick flicks. Which is really too bad, because it is only in the chick flick these days that a moviegoer can be rewarded with a story that takes place in some reasonable facsimile of the real world, involving characters who bear some resemblance to actual human beings.

There used to be all kinds of movies made for a predominantly male audience in which story and character were paramount: workplace dramas, westerns, war movies, detective stories, gangster tales. Those movies are now extremely rare. They have been supplanted by science fiction, horror, comic-book, and wildly comic films whose primary characteristic is precisely that they do not take place in a recognizable reality.

The most remarkable American film to be released in 2008, so far, is a chick flick that is so chick-flicky -Hollywood wouldn't even touch it. Helen Hunt, onetime star of the sitcom Mad About You and a most unlikely Best Actress Oscar winner 10 years ago for As Good As It Gets, has coauthored, directed, and is the star of Then She Found Me. In times past, this tale of a woman put up for adoption as a baby, whose birth mother tracks her down just as her marriage collapses and her adoptive mother suddenly dies, would have been a major studio release. Hunt spent more than a decade trying to get it made, and finally found a small production shop to give her a few million dollars and just 27 days to film it.