Sliding Doors
British actor Peter Howitt wrote and directed this British romantic comedy-drama with a "road not taken" premise recalling the 1921 play +If by Lord Dunsany (1878-1957), Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life (1946), and O.Henry's short story Roads of Destiny (1909). Howitt's storyline branches in two directions: Helen (Gwyneth Paltrow) loses her job at a classy London PR firm, has a run-in with a purse-snatcher, and just misses catching her boyfriend Gerry (John Lynch) in bed with his former girlfriend Lydia (Jeanne Tripplehorn). But what if it were one of those days when everything goes right? As the sliding doors close while she stands on a subway platform in the London underground, Helen ponders the events in her alternate reality. The plot of Lord Dunsany's +If also hinges on a future determined by catching or missing a train. Sliding Doors was shown at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival. more..
Director: Peter Howitt
Starring: Gwyneth Paltrow, John Hannah, John Lynch, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Zara Turner
The story is hackneyed, and the gimmick only doubles the dullardry.
You're hooked enough to keep watching, even if the characterizations veer toward the two-dimensional.
Sound tricky? It is, and all a little too cutely so, the switches back and forth between realities ever more contrived and eventually tiresome, prompting giggles of relief as the storylines painfully draw towards a soap operatic convergence.
As we switched relentlessly back and forth between A and B, I found that I wasn't looking forward to either story.
No doubt this seeming effortlessness was hard-won. Movies this smooth don't happen by accident.
Sydney Pollack
BAFTA Awards (1999)
Best British Director
Empire Awards, UK (1999)
Best Screenwriter
European Film Awards (1998)
Best Actress
Florida Film Critics Circle Awards (1999)
Best Foreign Actress
Russian Guild of Film Critics (1998)
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