Which life is it, anyway?

>> Demi Moore flops in the parallel-universe movie Passion of Mind

by MATTHEW HAYS

Demi Moore's latest film, Passion of Mind, is part of a trend in movies that's rapidly evolving into its own sub-genre. There was Sliding Doors, in which Gwyneth Paltrow plays the same woman in two parallel universes, who finds her life unfolding in two distinctly different ways. Then there was Me Myself I, in which Rachel Griffiths switches places with her parallel-universe counterpart, learning what her life would be like if she were married with children.

Now it's Demi's turn, and frankly, this whole parallel-universe exercise is beginning to feel pretty damn tired. In one life, Demi is a widow living in the French countryside with her two plucky daughters. When Demi puts her pretty head down and goes to sleep, she wakes up in New York, where she's a single, childless, highly ambitious career woman. She's soon falling in love in each life with two suitors, while also seeking out therapists in each universe to try and figure out her double-life dilemma, or sleeping disorder, or whatever it is.

These films effectively act as meditations on fate. What would my life be like with or without offspring? With a different job? If I'd married that childhood sweetheart? Or, more profoundly, if I hadn't had my ears pierced? Notably, these films' protagonists are all women. Faced with that rather daunting biological clock and increasing pressures to have power careers, it's understandable that this parallel-universe genre has manifested itself. But there are good movies and bad movies, and Demi's crack at this feels firmly locked in the latter category.

After a while, this "high concept" starts to feel rather irritating. Are we really supposed to care this much about a plot this flimsy and characters this fluffy? Worse still, it feels like a self-involved exercise--not a terrifically interesting one for the audience. What if, like, I were to make a movie where I had a parallel life as a heterosexual? Or, say, another life as a woman? (No crank e-mails regarding that last remark, please.)

You get the idea. Passion of Mind feels similarly self-indulgent. And I always kind of thought that Demi didn't have enough onscreen charisma to carry one movie plot, let alone two. For me, the most exciting moment in Passion of Mind arrived when I popped a piece of chewing gum in my mouth. Num num! That refreshing taste! That minty goodness! Okay, so it sounds a bit absurd. But one savours these moments, when one is forced to sit through a film as banal as this. :

Passion of Mind opens Friday, June 2