Silding Doors
I really really liked this movie, and I could go on and on about it. I will attempt not to. Short version for the guys itching to return to their video games: Good date movie. Won’t bore you. No real nudity. Do not bring your date flowers.
Gwyneth Paltrow really turned me off her when she was in the execrable Great Expectations, so she really had a lot of work to do to get me to like her again for this movie. She succeeded. The premise is basically this - Gwynnie either catches the tube (subway), or she misses it, and from that instant her life diverges into two alternate lives (which is the “real” one? They are equally real, equally important) and the simple act of missing the train or not carries her along two closely parallel paths but with utterly different consequences.
I don’t want to tell you ANYTHING and damn me for my discretion. I want to hold fast to my policy of not giving plot away…must…reveal…SOMETHING…entice…viewers…see…movie! OK, a benign example. In life 1, she is depressed and drinking in a bar. The camera pans down the bar away from her, and catches her, in life 2, walking in, happy. Same shot, different reality/life track/whatever. Life2GP passes the spot at the bar where she would have been sitting in Life1. It’s not a hippy dippy cosmic head trip or anything. It’s just, some things, like a crew race, would happen if she were there or not, and other things, like the pretty blue office space, would not.
The cast is great. You know it’s good when I have no adequate adjectives. Jeanne Tripplehorn, widely reviled for some reason in the States, is an American sultry queen, and she’s great! John Hannah, as James, with his strong Southampton brougue and natural wit, is wonderful. John Lynch, as her boyfriend Jerry, is both pathetic and slimy, sympathetic and amoral. Gwyneth totally pulls off the challenge of the role - she’s not two people, she’s just in two movies, simultaneously, with the same other characters, but different plot lines. It’s a testament to the filmmakers that you never confuse one plot line for another.
The cutting back and forth between her life-lines (thank you John Smith!) was used as effectively as the past and present cutting in Dead Again, an extreme compliment if you know me. It was very amusing, entertaining, not predictable, it was romantic and sad and funny and everything that every movie should be and so few are not. It even makes you think. Naturally it’s English. Paltrow’s accent is great and her liberal use of the dialects slang is just the more convincing surrounded by natives. I was doing James Hannah all day at work. Smith’s editing was great - write this one down, Academy folks, it’s a long time til January. Great script, interesting camera work, superb acting. I can find nothing wrong with it, the more I think about it. Hmmm. It’s been a while since I could say that. So pay your money, and if you don’t like it, tell me why.
MPAA Rating PG-13
Release date 4/24/98
Time in minutes 99
Director Peter Howitt
Studio Paramount
