Me Myself I film review

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ME MYSELF I

If you could live your life over, what would you choose to do differently? Maybe turn down a job offer which, in hindsight, turned out to be a huge mistake, let your heart rule your decisions rather than your head, or perhaps never buy that ticket to Gone In 60 Seconds, and see the charming Me Myself I instead?

Thirtysomething Pamela Drury (Rachel Griffiths), a magazine journalist with her finger firmly on the pulse of the '90s single woman, has always rued the day she turned down a marriage proposal from Robert Dickson (David Roberts).

For 13 years, she has dreamt about a fairy-tale of marital bliss that could have been hers of she had only answered, "Yes". Fate thankfully decides to give Pamela another chance when she literally runs into her doppelganger: the Pamela Drury who did accept Robert's proposal and now lives in the suburbs with three children - Stacey (Yael Stone), Douglas (Shaun Loseby) and Rupert (Trent Sullivan) - and a pet dog.

Married Pamela is plagued by similar doubts as Single Pamela - was she right to give up her independence and fiery individuality to walk up the aisle? - so the pair decide to swap places for a few days and see whether life really is greener on the other side of the relationship fence.

Writer-director Pip Karmel constructs an interesting premise, playing on the expectations of Single Pamela and the audience to create instances of humour, conflict and despair.

The heroine's realisation that married life isn't all she had hoped it would be is gradual and believable, founded on a series of mini-triumphs and disasters involving fidelity, parenting, sexual attraction and those three little words: love, honour, obey.

Single Pamela's discomfort in the early scenes, feeling her way around married life, is palpable, conveyed by Griffiths' looks of exasperation, bewilderment and frustration to camera. Her ordeal is all the more powerful because the rest of the family are oblivious to her suffering, too absorbed in their own traumas to worry about dear ole mum.

Oscar nominee Griffiths is luminous, once again displaying her deftness for comedy and terrific emotional depth. She moves effortlessly from high drama to high comedy in a single change of facial expression, welcoming us as silent conspirators in this high stakes game of What If?.