'Sliding Doors' part of the British Film Festival
By Tam Notosusanto
JAKARTA (JP): What if. That's the essential premise of the movie Sliding Doors, in which the doors of a London underground tube determine what kind of life awaits a young woman.
Helen (Gwyneth Paltrow), a progressive urban professional, has had a really bad day. She has been sacked from her job at a PR firm, then, as she tries to catch the train home, she misses it. And then when she tries to take a taxi instead, she gets mugged and is injured. The only comfort she finds at the end of the day is in the arms of her boyfriend, the struggling writer Gerry (John Lynch), who loyally waits for her in their apartment.
But wait. What if she never misses that train home? This movie also shows how Helen manages to get on the tube, has a brief conversation with a chatty fellow passenger named James (John Hannah), arrives home and finds her boyfriend in bed with another woman. She throws Gerry out, meets James again and begins a new relationship with him, while she sets up her own business and builds a new life.
With this film, writer-director Peter Howitt (who appears briefly as one of Helen's office co-workers) presents us with the idea that the difference of a few seconds can alter the course of someone's life.
The film begins as an ordinarily realistic one as Helen goes to her office only to hear the news that she has been fired. Then, as she goes down into the underground station, she seems to have entered the twilight zone. She misses the train, then the film rewinds a little, and this time she catches the train and goes on to an entirely different life.
From that point on, the film is split into two parallel universes, with the story going back and forth between the two Helens. Howitt makes it easy for us to distinguish the two by having one Helen with a Band-Aid on her face and the other without. Later, it's either the long-haired Helen or the short- haired one.
This concept is nothing new in cinema, of course. The late, great Polish cineast Krzysztof Kieslowski has visited it twice, with Blind Chance, in which a man's life goes down three probable roads, determined only by whether or not he manages to catch a train, and The Double Life of Veronique, in which Irene Jacob plays two different but essentially similar women.
Sliding Doors is pure melodrama, made interesting by the parallel-universe scheme, the well-written screenplay and by the actors' performances. Gwyneth Paltrow, who has now boasted her British accent in three films (the other two being Emma and Shakespeare in Love), delivers the delicate role of Helen, bringing subtle nuances to present one individual split into two personalities: one strong and independent, the other weak and submissive.
But the film's real electricity comes from John Hannah's earnest, engaging playing of James, the sunny new suitor in Helen's renovated life. You will probably recognize Hannah's face from his small roles in the Hollywood movies The Mummy and The Hurricane. But here is the chance to witness the acting of this award-winning actor, who won the hearts of audiences in Four Weddings and a Funeral and now steals all the scenes he appears in Sliding Doors, performing a Scottish-accented guy infatuated with Monty Python.
Although this 1998 film is co-produced by the American filmmaker Sydney Pollack and stars two American actresses: Paltrow and Jeanne Tripplehorn (Basic Instinct, The Firm), -- who plays the nasty boyfriend-snatcher -- Sliding Doors is apparently still British enough to be included in this year's British Film Festival, to be held in Jakarta between July 1 and July 7, in Bandung (July 8 and July 9) and Surabaya on (July 15 and July 16).
Sliding Doors will be one of the four feature films that open the festival on Saturday, July 1, along with Carla's Song, Miss Julie and the Oscar-winning Elizabeth. Three other feature- length films showing in the festival are Beautiful Thing, Beautiful People and East is East, a recent winner at the British Academy Awards.
As in previous years, the films will be accompanied by a number of short films, and this year's selection includes the Oscar-winning gem Work Experience.
All films will be shown at Graha Bhakti Budaya at the Ismail Marzuki Cultural Center. Tickets, priced at Rp 6,000, can be obtained starting June 23 at The British Council, with a special offer of buy three, get one free (only at The British Council), or at the venue.
Collaborating with the Jakarta Arts Institute (IKJ) and The Independent Filmmakers Confederation (KONFIDEN), The British Council will also hold a discussion on short films on June 29 and a workshop on production design with veteran production designer Tom Conroy, between June 30 and July 3.