Cinema: I Led Two Lives, Simultaneously

The highly touted Sliding Doors is too cute by half

Damn, I missed the train! Good, its sliding doors have opened again to let me through. Which one has happened to frazzled young Helen (Gwyneth Paltrow)? Both. It is the cunning conceit of the British romantic comedy Sliding Doors to create and follow alternative futures--both tines of that fork in life's road we all occasionally face and that leaves us wondering, What if?

Ah, the old What if? trick. It has inspired such evocative works as Alan Ayckbourn's play Intimate Exchanges (a woman has, or doesn't have, a cigarette, and her choice leads to 16 variations) and Krzysztof Kieslowski's film Blind...

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