SLIDING DOORS

Gwyneth Paltrow, John Hannah
Miramax/ Paramount, Rated R, 105 Minutes

Thursday, April 30, 1998
http://www.ew.com/ew/review/movie/0,1683,154,slidingdoors.html


Is fate a path pre-ordained by the heavens, or a recurring
crapshoot? In the romantic fantasy "Sliding Doors," writer-
director Peter Howitt demonstrates a lovely feel for the
dreamy poetry of What-Ifs -- always a deeply satisfying
formula for romances and melodramas. Having been fired from
her vague public-relations job, Helen (Gwyneth Paltrow), a
limp asparagus spear of a Londoner, mopily heads home to the
flat she shares with her boyfriend, Gerry (John Lynch). As
she sprints to catch the train pulling into the tube station,
the doors slide shut: She's too late.

But what if, in that split second, Helen had made it aboard?
The film rewinds, readjusts, the doors of possibility slide
open. One Helen, the one who boarded the train, would have
met fellow commuter James (John Hannah); would have come home
in time to catch Gerry in bed with his American she-devil of
a former girlfriend (Jeanne Tripplehorn); would have booted
sorry, two-timing Gerry, launched a successful independent
PR business, and taken up with the perfect, adorable, adoring
James. The other Helen, meanwhile, the one who watched the
train pull out, would have missed James, and missed cues about
Gerry until it was almost -- but not quite --too late.

Such is the supple structure of "Sliding Doors" that Version
1 of Helen’s life constantly crosses paths with Version 2;
in the end, Howitt suggests, we are the merge and morph of
every possibility.

It’s clear, of course, who Mr. Right is in this equation:
He’s the charmer with the succulent Scottish accent first
heard here when Hannah recited W.H. Auden in "Four Weddings
and a Funeral." Certainly Helen’s intended isn’t the
indecisive, inarticulate lout portrayed by Lynch ("Some
Mother’s Son") -- although if Gerry and James had been more
fairly matched, the ante would have been raised far more
enticingly. But then, as played by Paltrow, Helen is such a
low-energy heroine, it’s hard to believe her enthusiasm for
any man. The unaddressed What If, then, is whether James
might have lived a more wonderful life had a different bird
landed in the seat next to his as the doors slid shut.

Grade:  B

-- Lisa Schwarzbaum