Me Myself I (1999) + Passion of Mind (2000) – DVDs

ME MYSELF I
**/**** Image B Sound A Extras C
starring Rachel Griffiths, David Roberts, Sandy Winton, Yael Stone
written and directed by Pip Karmel

PASSION OF MIND
**/**** Image A Sound B+
starring Demi Moore, Stellan Skarsgård, William Fichtner, Peter Riegert
screenplay by Ron Bass and David Field
directed by Alain Berliner

by Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. With a bumper crop of "what if?" movies hitting screens over the past couple of years–enough of them, perhaps, to signify a genre–the time is nigh to examine, in the hope of capping, this Cinema of Regret, a marriage propagandist's dream. Both Me Myself I and Passion of Mind arrive (coincidentally?) on DVD this week, and each in its roundabout way encourages its existentially lost central character to attach sentimentalism to family values. Dan Quayle must be happy as a clam.

While these movies come packaged under the pretext of fantasy, their escapism is hardly healthy or fulfilling: Some of us feel that life's crappy enough without dwelling on what could've been. Worse, and though Passion of Mind is less guilty of this, they ultimately tell us that life is one big botched opportunity. I kept waiting for Rachel Griffiths's heroine of Me Myself I to come to terms with the choices she did make, but the film is cruel to her, and viewers, until its bittersweet finish.

Griffiths plays Pamela Drury (a name that sounds an awful lot like "dreary"), a single, well-respected magazine writer whose latest birthday, and the evenings of booze and porn that accompany it, occasions a stroll down memory lane, back to the days of Robert Dickson, the proverbial One That Got Away. What if she had accepted his proposal? After a half-hearted and disturbingly glib suicide attempt, Pamela finds herself living the speculation: In a gloss on The Prince and the Pauper, she has supplanted an alternative universe version of herself (who steals away when our Pamela isn't looking) to become Mrs. Dickson, homemaker and mother of three. And, despite having to wipe bottoms and cook proper meals, she settles into the role quite comfortably.

Demi Moore's heroine has issues far removed from Pamela's in Passion of Mind: her well-to-do New York literary agent Marty becomes a widowed mother living in France named Marie every time she goes to sleep at night–or is it the other way around? Fully conscious, like Pamela, of this dual existence, she seeks psychiatric counsel on opposite sides of the pond. The New York shrink (Peter Riegert) believes Marie's to be the dream world, a matter of a busy woman devising a fantasy of domesticity for herself. Dr. Langer (Joss Ackland) from France has an equally strong argument: Doesn't everybody imagine being wealthy and successful?

That's a fertile paradox, but unfortunately director Alain Berliner and screenwriters Ron Bass and David Field hold themselves above questions of logic. The picture avoids asking crucial questions that can't be answered with a minimum of fuss, such as, What would happen if Marty/Marie took an afternoon nap? Or, What would happen if a loud noise woke her suddenly? Does she ever feel as though she's slept? (It seems like she never actually gets to rest.) If I were the boyfriend of either personality, I would grill her about such things. Instead, Aaron (William Fichtner) and William (Stellan Skarsgård) choose to spend precious daylight hours carping about their jealousy of the other, even though Aaron considers William only a figment of her imagination and vice versa. The filmmakers' fear of genre is disappointing, because sometimes these nerdy details are profound ideas in and of themselves.

I don't necessarily harbour any ideological grudges against the glacially paced Passion of Mind (I like that a certain ambivalence is built into the premise), but I definitely have issues with Me Myself I, the livelier, funnier entry of the two that nevertheless leaves a sourer aftertaste. Passion of Mind waxes philosophically and at a distance about how a woman can never feel entirely confident in choosing a path because of various societal forces arrayed against her. A project conceived and executed entirely by men, it is, ironically, more sensitive to the role of today's women than the female-helmed Me Myself I, with Bass and Field leaving their protagonist on better terms. To be fair, they arrive at those terms in an annoyingly Hollywood manner that insists on leaving nothing to ambiguity.

Me Myself I confirms Pamela's worst suspicions by story's close: that the key to happiness is finding a man–and wiping bottoms and preparing meals. Yes, Pamela's married alter ego works for a periodical as well, but the computer station where she writes her articles is introduced to us covered in a blanket, a dirty little secret in a backroom that's complemented by a pair of earmuffs, which she's apparently content to wear as she types to blot out the household racket. This should bother a multi-award-winning journalist on so many levels, yet all that irks her is the computer's tendency to malfunction.

When Pamela II returns to her family, she tells her temporary replacement, "I had to know." Evidently, a taste of free will has driven her back to a complacent partner and their obnoxious offspring; circuitously, a sampling of the ball-and-chain lifestyle will push our Pamela to seek out a husband with a new edge of desperation, unless I'm misreading the closing scenes. Since when did career ambition turn unfashionable again? And why is a woman telling this regressive tale? It would be nice to meet a motion picture within the what-if category that relaxes biological-clock hysteria as opposed to inciting it. Me Myself I smugly and depressingly positions independence as the step between school and wedding vows, not to be considered a goal in and of itself. Pamela's journey is one of repentance for being exceptional, and that's dreary, indeed.

THE DVDs
As I mentioned, Me Myself I and Passion of Mind arrived simultaneously on DVD, and their audio-video presentations are comparable. Me Myself I is anamorphically letterboxed at 1.85:1, and the transfer is solid but short of stunning: there is too much artificial edge enhancement, leading to pronounced grain and jagged edges. Colours grow more naturalistic as the movie progresses–by design, I'm sure, as pre-switchover, Pamela and her surroundings have a sickly blue tinge to them. (Real subtle coding.) The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix, however, is excellent, showing loud, clear, deep songs and detailed soundscapes.

Passion of Mind warrants opposite praise. Its anamorphic, 2.35:1 image goes above and beyond the call of duty to accurately represent Eduardo Serra's handsome cinematography. Bold colours never veer towards oversaturation, and near-perfect contrast leads to consistently high shadow detail. However, the disc's DD 5.1 soundtrack is standard-issue for a melodrama, meaning that very few effects find their way into the rear channels. Although neither the surrounds nor the lower frequencies get a chance to work up a sweat, there is some nice, full-bodied bass towards the end of the film.

Me Myself I includes an informative commentary by writer-director Pip Karmel that still barely holds our attention due to her sleepy delivery. To be honest, I had to listen to it in pieces, and was put off early on by Karmel's vehement insistence that Pamela is not watching triple-X material during a pivotal sequence. (If a buck-naked woman bouncing up and down and screaming orgasmically isn't porn, what is?) Trailers for Me Myself I, Mifune, 28 Days, Crazy in Alabama, Hanging Up, and Girl, Interrupted can also be accessed from the exceedingly silly menu screens. The Passion of Mind DVD features only one extra, the film's trailer.

• Me Myself I
  104 minutes; R; 1.85:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 5.1, English Dolby Surround, French Dolby Surround; CC; English, French subtitles; DVD-5; Region One; Columbia TriStar
• Passion of Mind
  105 minutes; R; 2.35:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 5.1, English Dolby Surround; CC; English subtitles; DVD-5; Region One; Paramount