Sliding Doors
(1998)
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A beautiful young English woman learns that she has been fired from her PR job. On the way home, the doors of a tube car close on her, opening the "what if" floodgates. She begins to live out two lives: if she had made the train, and if she hadn't. An intriguing concept about fate and how simple moments have the ability to change our lives. |
If you could live your life again, would you do it differently? That's the thought behind this lightweight British comedy directed by former Bread actor Peter Howitt, in which Gwyneth Paltrow plays out two different scenarios after she misses/doesn't miss a tube train home. In one reality she finds out her boyfriend is a two-timing louse, so she leaves him and gets a cute new haircut. In her parallel world the hair is long and boring — very much like her life. Paltrow handles her English accent with ease, and she's well supported by John Hannah and John Lynch. But because her life is far more interesting in one half than the other, the movie never quite gels.
Halliwell's Film Guide
A formally clever, occasionally charming romance; the problem is that instead of one not very interesting existence, we witness two.