SXSW

'Then She Found Me,' 'Intimidad,' 'Tulia, Texas'

Hunt's debut takes fresh look at a familiar topic

'Then She Found Me'

Helen Hunt's feature directing debut (she also stars) lets her share a grown-up woman's perspective on a dilemma (inconvenient pregnancy) and an archetype (the emotionally inept man-child) that have seen plenty of play in recent comedies. Hunt, refreshingly, steers almost entirely clear of cheap yuks and is unwilling to use the challenges her protagonists face as simple plot points: Here, when a character is a single parent, a kid's existence actually affects the decisions he makes. The "he" in question is Colin Firth, who, like Hunt's character, has recently been divorced; the two gravitate toward each other, naturally, and Firth's diffidence in the face of new love plays out beautifully. Anything but diffident is Bette Midler, a self-obsessed talk show host who arrives out of the blue to claim she's Hunt's real mother — and to inject some restrained kookiness into the tale's maturely handled midlife crises. 6:30 p.m. Saturday at the Paramount Theatre. — John DeFore

'Intimidad'

In terms of craftsmanship, "Intimidad" is just a step or two above a home movie: a mishmash of camcorder footage and scratchy, washed-out 16 mm film that doesn't fit together smoothly. But that's not inappropriate considering the subject, a young Mexican family accustomed to life in a plywood shack with a metal roof and open holes for windows. The movie's intense focus on this 21-year-old couple more than compensates for its technical roughness, injecting much-needed humanity into the dry labor statistics of trade and immigration debates. We meet the pair in Reynosa, where they've moved far from their newborn daughter in hopes of scraping together enough to buy a piece of land. Loneliness and wages that (despite working overtime) leave about $15 each month for savings test their commitment, and we watch over a couple of harrowing years as they try to reconcile hope and love with tough realities. 10 p.m. today at Alamo South 2; and 10:15 p.m. Tuesday and 9:30 p.m. Thursday at Austin Convention Center. — J.D.

'Tulia, Texas'

A made-for-TV doc recounting a shameful episode in recent Texas history, "Tulia, Texas" does a fair job of getting the basics across: how 46 people in a town of 5,000 (39 of them black) were corralled in a drug sting that, upon closer inspection, was riddled with holes and led by an undercover drug agent who turned out to have a history of theft and abuse of power. The scandal, which sadly played out in a familiar racial template, with only a few white residents proclaiming their skepticism about the charges, has been well documented already, though, and this recap adds little. Moreover, the chronology may confuse viewers who don't know the case; it's unclear, especially early on, that interviews are being conducted as the years-long saga unfolds, rather than after its end. 2 p.m. Saturday and 9:30 p.m. Tuesday at Dobie Theatre; 2:30 p.m. Thursday at Alamo South. — J.D.