SLIDING DOORS
Rebecca Wan
Written and Directed by : Peter Howitt (II)
Produced by : Intermedia Films / Mirage Enterprises / Miramax Films / Paramount Pictures [us]
Main Cast : Gwyneth Paltrow, John Hannah, John Lynch, Jeanne Triplehorn, Zara Turner.
Length : Approx. 1hr45 minutes
Rating : * * * out of * * * * *
This review might contain spoilers. Read on at your own risk!
Despite numerous references to the work of Monty Python and Woody Allen -- two things which should make any movie worth watching -- SLIDING DOORS strikes one as being rather artificial.
It does, however, have several things going for it. Her Goddessness Gwyneth of Paltrow, queen of the tacit eyebrow arch, for one, and for two, a too-clever story premise that nonetheless keeps one curious right to the end of the film. Non-brit brit-watchers will also find the usual perspective on "charming British behaviour" conventional Hollywood films deploy when forced to locate their films outside of home ground. And make no mistake, this is a classical Hollywood film.
Paltrow is Helen, an advertising-slash-PR type person who gets fired, takes the subway home, and returns earlier than usual to find her boyfriend in bed with Jeanne Triplehorn. In a split narrative-second, however, one is shown that she in fact misses the train home, gets attacked by a mugger while flagging a taxi, goes to the hospital, and when she finally does return home, misses the revelatory confrontation she would have had if she hadn't missed the train, because devil-woman Jeanne Triplehorn has already left the apartment.
And so the narrative divides, telling of Helen 1 and Helen 2. Helen dumps boyfriend Gerry (a suitably dark-browed and slimy John Lynch), gets a glam hair makeover and tentatively dates James (John Hannah), whom she has met on her ride home. No wait, instead Helen stays with slimy boyfriend while he continues to cheat on her with feisty scarlet-woman Lydia (Triplehorn), keeping her mousy brown do in the process. Helen falls in love with James, no wait she allows herself to get trapped in a bitch-from-hell confrontation with Gerry and Lydia.
The usual things people say about this film are that it's about choices and "what-if" questions, but is it really? What choice does Helen have in any of what happens to her? And doesn't SLIDING DOORS prove all the more Hollywood's excessive need to explain everything, rather than explore possibilities?
What's worse is, SLIDING DOORS takes an unusual setting and turns it into a stack of beautifully rendered cliches with limited creativity. This is really not all bad, because it's all brought together very nicely: the blatant symbolism (lots of doors closing at the right narrative points), the thematic and narrational redundancy, the usual vagueness that doesn't require anything in the story to resemble real life. How many ex-PR executives do you know autmatically head for waitressing and sandwich delivery jobs when they get canned?
There are more pop-song-montages in this film than in SPICE WORLD. Gwyn waiting tables, looking cute and stressed in pigtails, Gwyn getting a Vidal-Sassoon-commercial haircut, Gwyn painting her newly setup PR agency office in quirky, laughing poses, Gwyn making out with John Hannah in the soaking rain. When she danced with Ethan Hawke, in GREAT EXPECTATIONS, there was an exotic surrealism to the rain-drenched scene, making the moment audacious, wrenching, singular. In SLIDING DOORS, one strains for a wisp of chemistry between Paltrow and Hannah, and wishes Hannah's "charming, funny Scotsman" lines were funnier, or at least more charmingly written.
SLIDING DOORS is the classical Hollywood simulacrum, and delightfully so. Music video segments aside, Peter Howitt's first film seems to embrace Hollywood's love for the *idea* of things rather than the actual things themselves. Consider Helen's "PR" work, which seems to consist of sitting in an all-blue office and wondering whether to ring James up. Paltrow is the queen of the close-up. If she didn't exude such awe-inspiring elegance, Paltrow would fit right in with the sitcom Friends.
Still, SLIDING DOORS is a wonderful "small" film, the kind one enjoys watching even as a rerun movie on cable, or rents twice from the video store. Curiously, Jeanne Triplehorn, who looks like a cross between Laura San Giacomo and Liv Tyler, was this writer's favourite character. She gifts her strereotyped other-woman-turned-home-wrecker role with vitality and belivability, creating a good contrast to Paltrow's eternally lucid placidity.
SLIDING DOORS is an enjoyable experience for its no-nonsense escapism and cleanly scrubbed sentimentality. And anyway, doesn't one really watch Gwyneth Paltrow movies (and Julia Roberts movies, and Michelle Pfeiffer movies) simply to see her in the latest fashions and the most radical hairdo?
That's what I do.
The Flying Inkpot's Rating System
* Wait for the TV2 broadcast.
** A little creaky, but still better than staying at home with Tonight With Gurmit.
*** Pretty good, bring a friend.
**** Amazing, potent stuff.
***** Perfection. See it twice.
Read current movie reviews at The Flying Inkpot.Read other movie reviews at The Flying Inkpot.Other film reviews by other writers can also be obtained from the InkVault through key word searches.
Explore the Flying Inkpot
They're Alive!
Concert Reviews
Bit deadish:
Other Resources at The Flying InkpotHome Readers' Comments
From: Steve (Sephen.Brech@jcu.edu.au)
I am not a fan of G.Paltrow and I din't see Great Ex, but this movie, is one of only a few what if movies that works. The movie is Chaos theory at it's most basic. Even if this movie only makes a few people in the world think, what if..?(in the context of thier life on this planet) then in my opinion it will open peoples thoughts to some larger and more complex issues that are effecting this planet.
