ME MYSELF I
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: In one world Pamela Drury chose
not to marry the man in her life and instead to
have a serious career. In a parallel world the
decision went the other way. Just when Pamela
is getting desperate to find a husband she finds
herself thrust into the other world and having
to be the other version of herself. This gives
her an opportunity to explore the good and bad
aspects of her decision. Rachel Griffiths stars
in this emotional Australian fantasy. There are
logic flaws but the film remains entertaining.
Rating: 6 (0 to 10), high +1 (-4 to +4)
Pamela Drury (played by Rachel Griffiths) is an award-winning journalist. Thirteen years earlier she nearly married Robert Dickson (David Roberts), but decided that her career was more important. She now looks with envious eyes on her married friends' lives and she wishes she had made the other decision. These days she just finds the dating scene to be depressing and the market just is not very good any more. She tries to salve her ego putting up little index cards that tell her things like "I love and approve of myself." On her 30-something birthday she is ready to commit suicide, but fate seems to step in and stop her at the last moment. The following day in a moment of carelessness she is hit by a car a literally knocked into another world. She is not in heaven or hell, but a parallel world where she did marry Robert. There Pamela meets-well, call her Pamela-2 (also played by Rachel Griffiths). Pamela-2 has been married for thirteen years to Robert and has a daughter and two sons by him. Pamela-2 regrets her decision to marry and to turn her back on her career. She gives Pamela the slip and goes to take her place in the world of the career-Pamela. Pamela decides to try out the life she spurned.
Filling in for Pamela-2 is more of a job than Pamela was expecting, but far easier than it would be in the real world. There one must remember what must be hundreds of thousands of bits of information just so that people are not tipped off that you are no longer the person you once were. Pamela finds that as feminists have been telling us for years, there is a lot of effort and skill involved in being a housewife. It would be easy for this film to turn at this point into a feminist tract, leaving Pamela in awe of how competent and savvy a housewife really is. However the script is a little more even-handed than that. Being a housewife has its positive and its negative sides, Pamela finds. It is full of moments that just fill Pamela with disgust. The worst of which is to clean up after her youngest who is neither toilet trained, nor able to wipe himself. Having been in need of sex well back into her previous life, she is disappointed to realize that the passion is gone from Pamela-2's marriage and Robert has very little interest in rekindling it. But her attitudes about her husband and herself are due for some radical changes.
ME MYSELF I is written and directed by Philippa "Pip" Karmel, set in Sydney, Australia and filmed on a minimal budget which seems to more than adequately support the script. Rachel Griffiths has an extremely expressive face which projects emotions very effectively, particularly her bewilderment at her situation. Karmel's style changes as the film proceeds. Popular music is played loudly over the soundtrack in the first part of the film, but much less so once Pamela has made the transition.
Some people tend to assume that in fantasy anything can happen and there are few rules that need to be followed. Actually just about the opposite is true. In the real world the apparently impossible happens frequently. In fiction authors are bound to be at least believable, and fantasy writers have the strictest set of rules of all. Karmel has failed to observe the logic of her own world. Pamela discovers that there is no way to get back to her own world from the world she was knocked into. Even the street where she lived does not exist in the new world. Yet Pamela-2 seems to be able to move between the two worlds without trouble. Pamela's replacement of Pamela-2 seems all too easy. After a day or two she seems to be able to function in the new world without suspicion being raised. There would be years of Pamela-2's experience that would be a complete blank to Pamela. People whom Pamela-2 would know, Pamela would have never seen. Even a tutored double can not long stand in for the original without detection. The self- replacement theme was much better handled in the science fiction film QUEST FOR LOVE or Akira Kurosawa's historical film KAGEMUSHA.
In the end, Karmel seems to be telling us that whatever alternative we have chosen, we will get some advantage and some disadvantage. Contrary to Frank Capra's IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, the choices we have made have not all been for the best and the world is not necessarily better for the choices we have made. It is merely different. Karmel is telling us to stop regretting the past and to make the best of what decisions we have made. It is something of a platitude, but there also is some truth there. I would give ME MYSELF I a 6 on the 0 to 10 scale and a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@lucent.com
Copyright 2000 Mark R. Leeper
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