parallel lives...

Has it ever occurred to you how utterly frustrating it is when you have wanted to meet someone after months of anticipation and then you just miss each other by a day? a moment? He has to leave or she has to jet-set to another place and then boom! You never know when you will see each other again! And that nagging feeling consumes you because you want to and will never know what could have happened had both of you made it to that one moment, one place in time?


This is the reason why I love this age-old flick "Sliding Doors." The plot manifests into a two-fold situation where it showed both sides of a story. Gwyneth Paltrow is Helen, an attractive, young woman who just got sacked from work and was trying to catch a train to go home and relieve herself of this stressful event. Perhaps her live-in partner, Gerry might have offered the necessary moral support she needed at such a low time in her career. In the first part of the one crucial scene, she is able to make it to the train and therefore makes it back home a little bit earlier than she was expected. To which she was greeted with the loathsome scene of Gerry orgasming in the arms of another woman in their own bed in the apartment that they both live in.



The second scenario manifests itself with the train doors just shutting down and her having to take an alternative route home. She is mugged unsucessfully by a scumbag and has to go to the clinic to have a rather severe cut on her forehead taped up. She arrives home later than expected hence NOT knowing that her boyfriend just had a whirlwind day in bed with that other woman in the first scenario.

The flick begins to illustrate Helen's life in this two split but rather bizaarely similar circumstances. Similar because they are portrayed as happening at the same moment in time. The emotionally distraught Helen cuts her hair and gives it another hue. Finding and dating another guy, James and beginning the process of dealing with the postpartum depression brought about by her ex's betrayal became the pattern of the story for the first Helen. She also learns to let go of the rather clingy past.

The naive and unknowing Helen is offered rare glimpses of her boyfriend's lack of fidelity but was always in denial of the unmistakable truth. Right until the end where she eventually is led to the truth by no other than the other woman.

The first thing I can comment about this picture is that I have never really been an admirer of Gwyneth's beauty haha! But this is probably the best she looked in her whole career. She was young and I think it was around this period that she was doing movie after movie including Great Expectations (which I am going to watch in a moment!!!). Her "bankability" was at its prime during these days in my own opinion.

The second thing I can express is this film makes us see the impossible. Why impossible? Because in our lives there can never be a two-fold scenario! The parallel universe is a popular theory but one which has yet to be proven scientifically in my opinion.

We have to make a decision when we arrive at a crossroad. We have to follow one path and go through with it through to the end! There can never be a split scene which one can see a sort of parallelism going on. The closest we can get to seeing the other side of the coin is through our ASSUMPTIONS. Perhaps a derivation from an unexpected form of intuition and maybe a bit of intellect could help us arrive at a conclusion but then again this one is never with 100 % certainty.

The flick is not really a blockbuster in many aspects of the word but it offers an interesting plot which is enjoyable to watch. It is not a feel-good film but it was light-hearted enough for me to enjoy on my bed-ridden day here in HK! hehehe....

PS thanks to these sites for the photos!!!!!

www.thriller-reviews.com/?m=200803
http://www.johnhannah.net/sdoors.html
www.guardian.co.uk/film/2007/nov/24/television