Netflix had been badgering me to watch Sliding Doors every time I logged in, so eventually I complied on a day when I was tired and in need of something unchallenging. You’ve not missed something new btw– this being the 1998 film, which I saw at the time and have watched subsequently, albeit some years back.
The story has so much potential – although I’m sure I read a huffy piece once saying it was a ripoff of something more superior, which I can well believe. I enjoyed it moderately, especially seeing London in all its glory and the pratfalls of useless Jerry the cheating boyfriend, but wished they’d sent it back for rewrites and given it a better ending.
Most of the characters are woefully one-dimensional, John Hannah probably coming off best, because he’s got the acting chops, plus that delicious accent. But the rest of them can be summed up in a couple of words – ‘feisty friend’, ‘vengeful ex/mistress’, ‘hapless boyfriend’. There’s also not a great deal of comedy in it, excepting John Lynch’s callous friend, who laughs immoderately at Jerry’s misfortunes, which is entertaining.
As for Helen, our Gynnie, she’s a lot better in Shakespeare In Love and she’s in every damn scene. Her accent is pretty good, apart from an odd pronunciation here and there. But she has only one expression for sad, mousy Helen, the one who doesn’t have the glamorous exciting new life. The script doesn’t really know what to do with her, so keeps making her ask the same question about the mysterious brandy glasses, as if she’s a novice Poirot. The blonde, exciting Helen is more interesting, although I highly doubt she’d get a small business loan in what seems like a week, bearing in mind she’s just been sacked, nor a stream of clients to warrant a secretary within the same timeframe.
The film works best in the earlier stages around the actual timelines diverging and whenever we see the alternate realities. Fun fact! I met the woman who played the three second cameo of the mother at the station who pulls/doesn’t pull her daughter out of the way. That was her daughter incidentally. Not that exciting actually! Much like the film.
The ending though really bothered me and I now realise explains my reluctance to watch it again. Both Helens end up in hospital, dull Helen having fallen down the stairs after evil mistress/ex reveals she’s also pregnant by scumbag Jerry. Blonde one having got all in a tizzy cos nice James the new boyfriend is revealed to be married – side note – James and separated wife kiss on the lips, which Helen sees. Really?! I can understand they’re on good terms after separating, but Helen’s been told by his work (a mysterious job we never find out about) he’s gone to the hospital with his wife to visit his mum. All the film needed was them standing there talking, looking affectionately at each other. It’s another example of the lack of subtlety, cos I don’t know many exes who’d give each other a smacker.
Blonde Helen and James make up in what seems to be a tropical rainstorm, then she walks straight in front of a lorry. Cue two trolley dashes down the hospital corridor, one with scumbag, one with newly nice James again. Blonde Helen dies, as it was only a figment of dull Helen’s imagination and that timeline slithers (or slides…) away.
Dull Helen loses her baby, walks away permanently from scumbag and gets in the same lift as James, having just left his mum’s room. Yet again her earring falls out – what is the matter with the woman’s ears?! And he picks it up and gives it to her, trotting out the same pointless Monty Python line about the Spanish Inquisition. It’s not even a gag in isolation and doesn’t apply to several of the situations it’s used in, including the first time in the lift with her misbehaving earring, when she more accurately thinks it should be ‘always look on the bright side of life’, having told him she’s lost her job. But this time she quotes the ‘correct’ response at him and they look at each other, puzzled as to how astoundingly in sync with each other they are. And then it ends. Dear God. So, the only extant bit of ‘real’ love story is two miniscule encounters in the lift, because the rest of it never happened. The film is fairly short anyway, would it have killed the team to have given us a few minutes of them going to get a milkshake, as he does with blonde Helen and starting a proper conversation…?