Return to Me *** (2000, David Duchovny, Minnie Driver) – Classic Movie Review 1428

David Duchovny and Joely Richardson star as happily married couple Bob and Elizabeth Rueland, who both work at Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo. But then architect Duchovny’s zoologist wife Richardson dies suddenly in a car accident and waitress Grace Briggs (Minnie Driver), who has heart disease since 14 and is near death, receives her heart in a transplant operation. When, a year later, Duchovny meets Driver at a restaurant, unaware of their connection, they find themselves strangely bonded and fall in love.

Co-writer/director Bonnie Hunt’s 2000 romantic comedy drama is sweet, well handled and oddly touching. Driver and Duchovny are very well matched and effective, there is some funny comedy from old-timers Carroll O’Connor and Robert Loggia, and Richardson does well enough in her brief, thankless role of Duchovny’s wife.

Hunt gives herself a role too, as the heroine’s friend Megan Dayton, and David Alan Grier (as the hero’s friend  Charlie Johnson) and James Belushi also appear.

Taking its title from the 1957 Dean Martin recording, Return to Me was released in April 2000. It was filmed in Chicago in 1999, with restaurant scenes shot at Twin Anchors, in Chicago’s Old Town neighbourhood. The hospital scenes were filmed in Michael Reese Hospital and feature Hunt’s brother, Dr Kevin Hunt, and his transplant team.

It was Carroll O’Connor’s final film before his death on June 21 2001, aged 76.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1428

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