Gwyneth Paltrow: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked

...And 5 That Sucked

5. Helen Quilley - Sliding Doors

Sliding Doors has a pretty cool idea at its heart, taking a sci-fi concept and applying it to a romantic drama - the film looks at two parallel universes which diverge based on whether Paltrow's Helen caught a train or not. It's the sort of fate vs. coincidence musing that everybody has thought over at one point or another. Paltrow is kinda convincing as Helen, an every-woman on the brink of either true love or heartbreak, but it in terms of wasted potential it sucks. There just isn't enough distinction in the two versions of Helen to make the development in the separate worlds all that impactful. The film even appears to be acutely aware of this, using obvious visual cues (most noticably hair colour) to highlight something the actress should have been able to do herself. For a much more competent comparison, look at Jake Gyllenhaal in Enemy - he plays both a timid teacher and his more confident doppelgänger/mental fracture, but makes the distinction clear in subtle ways, shifting demeanour and line delivery rather than making grand gestures, never spelling it out.