I Led Two Lives, Simultaneously

By RICHARD CORLISS

Damn, I missed the train! Good, its sliding doors have opened again to let me through. Which one has happened to frazzled young Helen (Gwyneth Paltrow)? Both. It is the cunning conceit of the British romantic comedy Sliding Doors to create and follow alternative futures--both tines of that fork in life's road we all occasionally face and that leaves us wondering, What if?

Ah, the old What if? trick. It has inspired such evocative works as Alan Ayckbourn's play Intimate Exchanges (a woman has, or doesn't have, a cigarette, and her choice leads to 16 variations) and Krzysztof Kieslowski's film Blind Chance (a man runs for a train and heads into three different realities). In writer-director Peter Howitt's version, the Helen who makes the train home finds her beau Gerry (John Lynch) in bed with his old girlfriend (Jeanne Tripplehorn); the Helen who misses the train gets mugged. And in both cases she meets a seemingly nice fellow, James (John Hannah), to whose wry persistence she increasingly warms.

The film means to be beguiling, and many will find it so. But in this viewer's alternative reality, Sliding Doors is way too strained, in narrative logic and in performance, to work. Paltrow either whines or twinkles; Hannah works overtime at being winsome; Lynch has not even a pinch of larcenous charm; Tripplehorn is reduced to stridency and humiliation. The actors appear to be on trial for unknown offenses, and what could be blithe and affecting instead comes on like--oh, like the Spanish Inquisition.

--By Richard Corliss