Sliding Doors

Comment:
Sliding Doors is not just a romantic comedy, it is a very entertaining and a bit surreal romantic comedy, filmed and edited in an intelligent way. Moreover, the finale is somewhat different from what I expected and it provides a perfect ending for the story.

The plot is based around an interesting idea, that is, show how a small and apparently irrelevant event can change the life of a person in a substantial way. However, what makes this really interesting is that in the movie, both the branches are examined at the same time, so we see what happens to the main character, Helen, both when she manages to slip through the train's sliding doors and when she misses it due to a delay of a few moments. In the first case, she finds her boyfriend Gerry in bed with another woman and so she is forced to change her life completely; in the second case, Gerry's lover has already left their house when Helen arrives, and so she continues to live with him, while he tries to choose between the two women...

It is very nice to see how the parallelism between the two stories is sustained, especially at the beginning, by various scenes located in the same place (but obviously with different characters and situations). In the second half, the parallelism is still maintained through the happening of some events on both the story lines. Obviously, the two stories soon diverge in order to show the completely different routes taken by Helen life, but the links are still highlighted in various scenes until the stories almost converge near the end.

Throughout the whole movie, there are a lot of funny and entertaining scenes, mostly based on witty dialogues. The most funny character is a secondary one, a friend of Gerry, who provides a couple of amusing speeches and has an irresistible laugh! All the actresses act very well, Gwyneth Paltrow is particularly good in her double role. The male characters, while not very charming, are also quite enjoyable and surely competent.

I won't spoil the finale here, I just say that I couldn't predict it at all, unlike many other far too usual movies. Although it is not a completely 'negative' ending, it is still quite dramatic and also a bit (or should a say 'a half'...) tragic, giving a final touch of substance to a story that could otherwise be seen as an unlikely romantic fable.

I think I can advice anybody to see this movie, it has both romantic and comical aspects, it is quite engaging since the beginning, it is light enough to be enjoyed by people who don't like to pay attention to complex movies but it still offers some ideas for reflection and hence will satisfy people who search for more than a plain story.