(1998) Sometimes we have a choice (as in Robert Frost's poem, "The Road Not Taken"), but other times we miss an opportunity based on circumstances outside of our control. What if …?

Fired from her public-relations job, Helen Quilley (Gwyneth Paltrow), drops an earring getting into the lift - a man stoops down to retrieve it for her - and heads back to her London flat via the tube, but misses getting through the closing doors of the carriage by seconds. Meanwhile, her live-in boyfriend Gerry (John Lynch), supported by Helen while he's writing his novel, is in bed with Lydia (Jeanne Tripplehorn), the woman he'd been with before meeting Helen.

Hailing a cab, Helen's injured in an attack by a purse snatcher; by the time she arrives home from the hospital, Lydia has departed. But what if she had just managed to get inside the carriage in time to enter her apartment while "Lady shagging Godiva" was still in flagrante delicto with Gerry?

Writer/director Peter Howitt's romantic fantasy explores the splitting of Helen's existence into parallel universes by successively alternatively scenes of contrasting events, showing what happens on each side of those sliding doors.

If instead of having to go find a cab to get home she had taken a seat inside the carriage, the man who'd picked up her earring ("You seem familiar"), gregarious James Hammerton (John Hannah), might have sat next to her and struck up a conversation in which, after hearing of her horrid day at work, he quotes from Monty Python: "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!"

Of course, entering her boudoir she's astonished again: "Who is she?" After Lydia leaves, Helen says to Gerry: "I got sacked, so did you it would seem." In the pub Gerry's mate Russell (Douglas McFerran) reminds him of an earlier prediction that "something ungoverned" would happen to resolve this "morality free zone" of two incompatible women.

Staying with her best friend Anna (Zara Turner), Helen gets a change of hairstyle (from long and brunet to short and blonde) and visits from the chatty bloke on the train who demonstrates through his humor and considerateness - "Everything happens for the best" - that not all men are cads like the "sad, sad wonker" Gerry.

But after James has encouraged Helen to open her own PR business and through her efforts James's friend Clive's restaurant has a successfully grand opening, Gerry turns up and Clive asks James: "Does she know about Claudia?"

On the other track where Helen remains ignorant of Gerry's indiscretions, she gets a job waitressing and delivering sandwiches (to the office where Lydia works) while he, unable to decide on which one he'd prefer to be with permanently, continues to pretend he's going to the library or doing research in Dorset - though his conscience bothers him, resulting in his behaving neurotically like Woody Allen - when actually he's with Lydia.

Further complicating both scenarios, Helen discovers she's pregnant. If she could choose between this pair of possibilities, which would she pick? Before the conclusion, Howitt hints that even knowing the direction one's life may be taking isn't enough to predict the outcome.

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Copyright © 2009 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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