Gwyneth Paltrow and Gwyneth Paltrow
Having seen Sliding Doors now, I have to say that I think it's one of the finest science fiction movies ever made in Hollywood. What makes it even better is that most people who saw it probably didn't recognize it as such.
Here's how it goes: Helen's boyfriend Gerry is sleeping with Lydia, the amazingly evil woman he broke up with three years ago because she was moving back to America; seems she's come back to Britain. One day while Gerry and Lydia are having their tryst, Helen is fired at work and, on her way home, either does or doesn't make the tube train. If she does, she gets home in time to, as she puts it later, interrupt Lydia in the midst of faking her orgasm. If she doesn't, she instead almost gets mugged, goes to the ER to get patched up afterwards, and arrives at home after Lydia has departed.
From here the stories diverge. The Helen who caught Gerry met a guy called James on the tube, and runs into him afterward while she is in a bar being despondent and drunk. In a series of compressions necessary because the writers were having to fit two movies into the running time of one, James helps Helen through the worst of the breakup, convinces her to start her own business, and eventually falls in love with her. In the course of this Gerry tries to reconcile with her, but she realizes he's still in contact with Lydia--this is where the "faking your orgasm" line comes in--and tells him to shove it. The other Helen sticks with Gerry as his excuses for what he's doing get thinner and thinner, helped along by the fact that Lydia is manipulative and he's thinking with his little head while being unable to stand up to Lydia's domineering personality. Both of these storylines reach their climaxes when Helen realizes she's pregnant--in the first line, by James; in the second, by Gerry.
The first Helen finds out that James is still married--he and his wife are separated and nearly divorced, but they've been keeping up a show for the sake of James's ill, frail mother. Helen and James are reconciled and all looks set for a happy ending when Helen, crossing the street, is hit by a car in the most manipulative story twist since An Affair to Remember. She's rushed to the hospital. The other Helen is called to an interview one evening; when she gets there, it's Lydia's apartment and Gerry is there (having told Helen he was going to the library), and Lydia greets her with, "Good evening, I've just called you here so we can all discuss whether I'm keeping your boyfriend's baby." Helen, frankly, flees and falls down the steps outside Lydia's apartment. She's also taken to hospital--naturally, the same one.
Both Helens lose their babies; James's Helen dies. The other Helen--now the only Helen--tells Gerry to take his indecision and shove it. She's released from the hospital, and as she's on her way out gets into an elevator (which of course also has sliding doors) with, you guessed it, James. He was there visiting his sick mum.
Did we mention that it's noted somewhere that Helen's a Gemini?
I'd like to applaud the writers for not making Gerry into a total snot. He's too given to letting his dick do the thinking and he couldn't stand up to a determined assault of nine-year-olds armed with marshmallows, but in the end he's OK; he takes great pains to not get caught not just for his own sake but because he doesn't want to hurt Helen, and part of the reason he can't leave Lydia is because he doesn't want to hurt her either. We don't of course, find out what happens to him after Helen dumps him, but one imagines he goes back to Lydia and lives a life of mild terror, which is about what he deserves.
It's not made clear, really, whether there's still a universe in which James is bereft and Helen is dead, or whether the wave function collapsed completely when the divergent element was removed. I'm inclined to think the former, but I'm not sure. Overall, it doesn't really matter; the interesting bit is the play between the two storylines, the ways they're the same and the ways they're different.