How Gwyneth Paltrow ate London

I don’t know what pos­sessed me. I loathe Gwyneth Pal­trow with a hatred bor­der­ing on the mur­der­ous, and I knew that this par­tic­u­lar film was going to be pure unmit­ig­ated crap. Yet for some strange reason — gen­eral ennui, prob­ably — I noted that Slid­ing Doors was on BBC1 last night, and decided to watch it.

In the name of Mayor Ken, Dick Whit­ting­ton and the pussy­cat that went up to Lon­don to visit the Queen, I wish I hadn’t.

I have a love/hate rela­tion­ship with Lon­don. I’ve doc­u­mented it here often enough. Just recently, how­ever, I seem to have reached some kind of unspoken agree­ment with this infernal met­ro­polis. I’ve (almost) stopped day­dream­ing of mov­ing to a rural barn in the back of bey­ond, with roses round the door and a goat at the end of the garden. Instead, I’ve resolved to give this place the bene­fit of the doubt. It has its good points, after all, and I’m try­ing to block my mind to the bad stuff such as the pub­lic trans­port sys­tem, the pol­lu­tion, the over­crowding, the cost of liv­ing … well, you get my point.

And then there are Lon­don movies. In so far as I feel I belong any­where, it’s here. This is my city. Con­sequently, I’m drawn to see­ing Lon­don por­trayed on the big screen — giv­ing a magical life to the famil­iar streets and build­ings, turn­ing the lens on the details that I rarely see with the naked eye. I’m think­ing of films like Michael Winterbottom’s Won­der­land (a per­en­nial favour­ite) or Patrick Keiller’s Lon­don; even The Long Good Fri­day, which is abso­lutely not my sort of movie.

Maybe the alarm bells should have soun­ded when I read the descrip­tion of Slid­ing Doors as a ‘romantic com­edy’. How­ever, when I’m feel­ing brain-dead and vacu­ous, even I can be swayed by the aver­age rom-com’s prom­ise of gentle humour, a few soppy moments and the per­fect happy end­ing. It couldn’t be that bad, surely?

Oh, but it was that bad. In fact, it was worse. I man­aged approx­im­ately a quarter of an hour in front of the TV before I got the irres­ist­ible urge to put my boot through the screen, whilst shout­ing “This is not Lon­don! This is not where I live!”

If you’re read­ing this in New York, Chicago or San Fran­cisco, then you’ll prob­ably be far more used to see­ing films set in your city than the aver­age Lon­doner. So tell me, do dir­ect­ors get it so wrong over there, too? Don’t they have res­id­ents up in arms if street names or loc­a­tions are arbit­rar­ily changed, import­ant build­ings are cre­ated where there aren’t any, loc­a­tions are moved closer to each other so that they’re more visu­ally appeal­ing, or the pub­lic trans­port infra­struc­ture of the city is altered for no appar­ent reason?

In the first few minutes of Slid­ing Doors, the lovely and fra­grant Gwyneth — speak­ing in an Eng­lish accent so ridicu­lously clipped that it could cut glass — embarks upon pos­sibly the most pecu­liar jour­ney on the Lon­don Under­ground net­work that I have ever had the mis­for­tune to wit­ness. Firstly, let’s send her to only the clean­est, poshest sta­tions, shall we? Only the most pristine and least crowded trains for our per­fect Hol­ly­wood super­star. Look, she’s found a seat imme­di­ately and her head’s not being forced into close prox­im­ity with some sweaty city businessman’s armpit! And didn’t that sta­tion announce­ment men­tion ser­vices on the Dis­trict Line when our delight­ful heroine is quite clearly on a Water­loo & City Line plat­form? What on earth is going on? Have we sud­denly entered Alice in Won­der­land territory?

You’re prob­ably think­ing that I’m tak­ing all this far, far too ser­i­ously. But I’m not. Ven­ture into the darkest recesses of the inter­net and you will dis­cover obsess­ives who have examined these scenes in wor­ry­ingly minute detail. My obser­va­tions are pos­it­ively restrained.

But let’s move on from pub­lic trans­port. Let’s con­tinue to the scene in which Gwyneth gets knocked down by a mug­ger and is res­cued by a friendly cab­bie, who drives her to the nearest Acci­dent & Emer­gency depart­ment. The driver doesn’t charge her for this jour­ney, pre­sum­ably because he’s a thor­oughly decent salt of the earth Eng­lish sort who knows his place in soci­ety. I’m sus­pect­ing that this isn’t very real­istic, but as it’s ages since I’ve been able to afford to hail a black cab I’m prob­ably less than qual­i­fied to comment.

What I can com­ment on, how­ever, is Ms Paltrow’s visit to the hos­pital. She is met by a nurse as soon as she sets foot through the doors, whisked through treat­ment in record time, and emerges only minutes later look­ing as pale and wan as always — but with a small stick­ing plaster del­ic­ately applied to her fore­head. God bless the National Health Ser­vice, eh? As someone who lived through his own minor head injury incid­ent some three and a half years ago, I can’t help won­der­ing why Gwyneth didn’t have to endure a five-hour wait sur­roun­ded by drunken piss-heads and the bloody par­ti­cipants of viol­ent fights from chucking-out time at the local pubs, like the rest of us mere mortals.

So Gwyneth heads home to her small, unas­sum­ing flat in a Geor­gian con­ver­sion. It looks like Chelsea, pos­sibly Knights­bridge (because nobody lives bey­ond Zone 1 in the movies). Whichever it is, it’s undoubtedly extremely posh and bey­ond the budget of the aver­age Lon­doner. Des­pite never hav­ing lived in such a well-heeled envir­on­ment, even my rudi­ment­ary grasp of interior archi­tec­ture tells me that the lay­out of this taste­fully designed flat — with just a hint of ‘shabby chic’, because they’re oh-so-bohemian, yah? — is vir­tu­ally impossible in such a build­ing. Oh, sod it, I’ve had enough.

At this point, I gave up on the film. I had already worked out what would hap­pen later — a shot of Tra­fal­gar Square over­looked by the Palace of West­min­ster, with the Cutty Sark moored along­side. Then John Han­nah and Gwyneth Pal­trow would most likely saunter to Hyde Park to feed the ducks, watched over bene­vol­ently by some Beefeat­ers, a couple of Chelsea Pen­sion­ers and the Pearly King and Queen. Well, it hap­pens all the time, doesn’t it?

“Let’s go for a romantic meal!” says Gwyneth excitedly (des­pite the fact that the poor girl looks like she hasn’t eaten any­thing since gor­ging on one whole lump of Tofu in 1996). “We could go and grab some of that good old hon­est Cock-er-nee cuisine from our friendly neigh­bour­hood gro­cer, Mr Al Fayed. Mama was telling me that he’s got a spe­cial offer on pie and mash at his lovely little Harrod’s mar­ket stall. It’s where I do all my daily shop­ping, just like every cit­izen of fair old Lon­don town. Strike a light, guv’nor. Apples and pears. How’s the trouble and strife? Sound of bow bells, innit?”

And off they walk, hand in hand, into the city sun­set — past the Bank of Eng­land, left at Tower Bridge, around Shakespeare’s Globe and straight into Leicester Square. Cue titles and a Cool Brit­an­nia ver­sion of the national anthem. I can already feel a lump in my throat and tears form­ing in my eyes. It makes me proud to be a Londoner.