Product Review

Sliding Doors (DVD)

British actor Peter Howitt wrote and directed this British romantic come dy-drama with a "road not taken" premise recalling the 1921 play If by L ord Dunsany (1878-1957), Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life (1946), and O.Henry's short story Roads of Destiny (1909). Howitt's storyline branc hes in two directions: Helen (Gwyneth Paltrow) loses her job at a classy London PR firm, has a run-in with a purse-snatcher, and finds her boyf riend Gerry (John Lynch) in bed with his former girlfriend Lydia (Jeanne Tripplehorn). But what i f it were one of those days when everything go es right? As the sliding doors close while she stands on a subway platfo rm in the Lond on underground, Helen ponders the events in her alternate reality. The plot of Lord Dunsany's If also hinges on a future determin ed by catching or missing a train. Sliding Doors was shown at the 1998 S undance Film Festival.