Sliding Doors
A woman arrives too late to the sliding doors of a train in london. She then must take a cab, and ends up following a life-path that diverges from the one she was travelling.
The film follows her into the train and home, where she discovers her boyfriend and so-called novelist fucking another woman. Against her will she stands beside her own reflection and takes a course through time that puts her directly into the path of someone who is separating from his wife, and keeping up appearances - and they become lovers together. It is an arc in which that love expresses itself in steps -at first revealing only a simple compatibility but giving away, for we of the male sex - the real drive to care for our better half. Of course, this is equalized by the guys driving around with a gun rack in the back of their ford F-150. They win points, we lose them. No problem.
And ultimately she has to leave. But her presence lingers. And at the intersection of the two lines of the film the common thread is life - the start of it, the end of it. A line can exist in a point if there is another dimension in which it exists. But a line cannot occupy the same space as another line. And in that resonating light she dies, struck by a car - and loses her child.
The woman that missed the doors never discovers her boyfriends infidelity and he clumsily meanders his way through his affair - trying to be faithful but completely distracted and indecisive and ultimately incapable of keeping anything she entrusted him with. And when she finds that she is pregnant, she tries to tell him. But it is the perogative of the other woman to claim her territory - the competitive nature of her lifeline, and the fact of her carried child - pulling the man between them into a place where he opens the door and sees her standing there with his adultress lover in the background explaining how the interview needs to wait, while she figures out what to do with her boyfriends child. She turns and falls down the stairs. Apocryphal ending of her pregnancy and of course, in the socialized medicine of Britain - only just escaping the terminus of her own life.
Or was it an ultra modern hospital that, the moment the other self died - flashed into her the memories of that other person behind the sliding door - and the love that awaited her there.
Ticking clock. Everyone stop.
She opens her eyes as the other one dies and her boyfriend is waiting there. The kind eyes. The heart away. I will do anything for you, honey. Anything.
Because in both lines, they are told by this socialized hospital employee that the baby was lost. And suddenly he seems to understand and be able to decide. If only because two life lines snapped back into a single point and one life line ended.
And so she says calmly. I want you to stand up. And walk to the door. And open it, and close it behind you.
And then as she leaves the socialized hospital with its modern lift, she misses the door again. And it closes on her. And when it opens.
He's there. And she drops her earring. By mistake. They know as they see each other, the first look into each others eyes.
The first moment together. They know. She remembers faintly the life she led on the different path - it leaves a quantum imprint upon her.
Anol shalom
Anol sheh lay konnud de ne um {shaddai}
Flavum
Nom de leesh
Ham de nam um das
La um de
Flavne…
We de ze zu bu
We de sooo a ru
Un va-a pesh a lay
Un vi-I bee
Un da la pech ni sa
(Aaahh)
Un di-I lay na day
Un ma la pech a nay
Mee di nu ku
La la da pa da le na da na
Ve va da pa da le na la dumda
Anol shalom
Anol sheh ley kon-nud de ne um.
Flavum.
M'ai shondol-lee
Flavu… {Live on…}
L'of flesh leigh
Nof ne
Nom de lis
Ham de num um dass
La um de
Flavne…
Flay
Shom de nomm
Ma-lun des
Dwondi.
Dwwoondi
Alas sharum du koos
Shaley koot-tum
The colorless sliding door closes upon two looking into each others eyes. The moment quietly fades to black.
* Listening to Limp Bizkit 'I Did it All for the Nookie' *
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