Sliding Doors **** (1998, Gwyneth Paltrow, John Hannah, Jeanne Tripplehorn, John Lynch) – Classic Movie Review 1714

Gwyneth Paltrow finds that fate can be sealed as fast as a pair of sliding doors and there are two sides to every story. She’s going to live both of them!

Writer-director Peter Howitt’s 1998 romantic comedy is clever, charming and witty, but at the same time tricksy and superficial. It can have parallel reactions and parallel conclusions, as audiences might simultaneously respond to its virtues and reject its demerits.

The lovely 26-year-old Paltrow (dressed by Calvin Klein) graces the movie with her delicious presence and perfect English accent as a London career girl whose life takes parallel paths after she unjustifiably loses her PR job. In Howitt’s unique twin storylines, her boyfriend John Lynch is either being faithful or not.

Everything hinges on whether or not she catches her tube train. In one version she catches the train, meets John Hannah and arrives home to find her lover Lynch cheating on her with his ex-girlfriend Jeanne Tripplehorn. In the other life, Paltrow misses the tube when the sliding doors shut on her, gets mugged and goes to hospital but arrives home to find Lynch alone in the shower. From here, the two stories progress together to satisfying conclusions. It’s certainly brilliantly clever the way it’s devised and worked out.

Howitt played Joey in the BBC sitcom Bread and he has a cameo appearance here. Zara Turner, Douglas McFerran, Paul Brightwell, Nina Young, Virginia McKenna and Kevin McNally also co-star.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1714

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