FILM REVIEW: Sliding Doors (1998)

             One would not think that Peter Howitt is the same man who directed the lackluster thriller Antitrust or Johnny English, the James Bond parody which stars Mr. Bean himself, Rowan Atkinson. In fact, Sliding Doors is his first outing as a writer-director. Howitt became known for his role as Joey Boswell in BBC’s Bread, a TV sitcom. Most probably, he was able to first grasp his sense of comedic timing here, which he applied to two of his works.

            Helen Quilley (Gwyneth Paltrow) is your typical workaholic woman who is in her twenties. She lives with her boyfriend Gerry (John Lynch), a typical serial cheater who has an affair with his ex-girlfriend, Lydia (Jeanne Tripplehorn), sneaking her in as soon as Helen leaves for work. At the start of the film, it easily established by alternating scenes that after Helen is booted out from her position in a public relations company (which involves missing Smirnoffs), downtrodden and on her way home, she ends up in front of a train with doors about to close. After this, the film’s narrative splits into what happens when she catches it as well as when she misses it.

Howitt’s positioning of women in the society is revealed by how he painted Helen, Lydia, and Helen’s friend, Anna (Zara Turner) in this British-American romantic comedy film. The three were very passive characters and only Helen (from both timelines) experienced character growth in the movie. Lydia started out as flirtatious bitch prone to tantrums when she doesn’t get her way and ended up that way. Anna was just the usual supportive girlfriend who consoles the female protagonist. We don’t know anything much about Anna and Lydia save for the former is the good cop and the latter is the bad cop. This is reflexive of the situation in UK at that time as well as now, where there is gender inequality and big businesses are noticeably bereft of women on top.

On the other hand, the males in the film have all the luck in the world. James (John Hannah), Helen’s other flame from an alternate timeline, only had to pick-up an earring, get misunderstood, and bumble with his heavy British accent while explaining, to get reconciled with Helen. The same goes for Gerry, who’s undecided not because he’s afraid of the women, but because it seems that his singular lower attachment controls his brain. In the film, Gerry is supposed to be a novelist working on his book. For a writer, he sure comes up with the lamest excuses. No wonder he couldn’t finish his first novel.

The film ends on a sour note in the alternate timeline where Helen had met James because she was able to catch the train. However, in reality (the real timeline), it ends with the meeting of the two. This leaves us a question with regards to predestination and evokes the concept of having a soulmate.

Paltrow and Hannah’s organic chemistry brought to life the limp lines they uttered out of the script. However, the ‘comedy’ part of this romantic-comedy was almost non-existent, as most of the jokes fell flat. The film is watchable though hardly memorable. This is the most palatable (not necessarily most enjoyable) of Howitt’s works so far, by the way.