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Don't look back? 'Me Myself I' director living two lives
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(CNN) -- The irony is thick, even over a telephone connection stretching all the way from Sydney, Australia, to the United States.
Here is Pip Karmel, happily married, promoting a film that champions a single woman. "Me Myself I," which opens in theaters this weekend, gives an old maid career gal a chance to make some profound choices in her life.
It's a role Karmel knows well. For the first 34 years of her life, she was single, and for much of it she was enjoying a career as an editor in the Australian movie biz (most notably, she cut the Oscar-winning 1996 film "Shine").
But now, with her Sony Pictures Classics film about to bow in the U.S., the latest Voice of Single Women Everywhere has another admission to make.
Not only has she been married for three years to a man named Pierre, a Parisian, says Karmel; she has another work in production, too.
"I'm due to have a baby tomorrow," she laughs.
Ironic? Well, no one said artists weren't allowed to grow, both physically or spiritually.
'As if there's a film like this'
"Me Myself I" stars Australian actress Rachel Griffiths, who is coming off her Oscar-nominated supporting role in the 1998 movie "Hilary and Jackie." In "MMI" she plays Pamela Drury, an award-winning journalist stuck in the middle of a 30-something crisis. She convinces herself that she would be more fulfilled if only she had said "yes" to her sweetheart's marriage proposal 13 years earlier.
Through the movie magic of a plot twist, Pamela gets to find out if that's true. She meets herself -- the one who married Mr. Right, had three kids and lives in a cute home in the 'burbs. The two Pamelas trade places, and we follow single Pamela as her nuclear-family dream becomes a real responsibility.
This plot of dual and dueling lives sounds remarkably like "Sliding Doors," the 1998 romantic comedy starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Karmel agrees. But she says she got the idea seven years ago; it took this long to raise finances and make the independent film.
"I'm sure it was original when I first thought of it," Karmel says. "Now, every single article compares my movie to 'Sliding Doors' and talks as if there's a film like this that comes out once a week."
Maybe not once a week, but similar offerings seem to be gaining popularity at the multiplex. Among them:
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If we're playing pop psychologist, perhaps the popularity of these storylines symbolize a deep-seated need. In an age where everyone seems to be racing into a new millennium, perhaps such films help us gain perspective?
'The path you didn't take'
Maybe not. When she dove into her screenplay, Karmel says, she was merely focusing on what she knew.
"It was written mainly to single career women who were wrestling with issues of what to do with their lives once they get to the point where they almost have to make a decision about children and marriage," she says. "But in the end, it turned out to have a much wider audience, and anybody can relate to it because anybody's got decisions that they've made that they wonder about."
In other words, Karmel says, the movie is about the power of "What if?"
What if we took that job offer? What if we chased that business idea? And yes, what if we never left that lover so many years ago?
"You can have regrets, but they're usually based on something that you just don't know," Karmel says. "You're probably idealizing the path you didn't take. You just have no idea if you would have stepped under a bus the next day if you'd made that decision.
"Whatever choice you make," she says, "you're better off committed to that choice and not looking back all the time."
It's this theme that makes it odd -- or timely -- that Karmel's movie comes out now. Here she is, stepping boldly and happily into her new life as married mother. And yet there are the ideas from her former single life flickering proudly on the movie screen.
Her marital status aside, Karmel remains a staunch defender of the modern single woman.
"There's so much in society that already supports the institution of marriage and I think there's a lot that's left unsaid about how hard it can be," she says. "It's not necessarily any better than the single life.
"But it's quite acceptable to portray single life (in the movies) as being a reason to be miserable," she says. "So we still have that enormous pressure (that claims) the ideal state is to be coupled up and to have children. I didn't want to perpetuate that too much.
"Of course," she laughs, "now I'm in the other life."
RELATED STORIES:
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Gary Ross breathes his life into 'Pleasantville'
October 12, 1998
Review: 'Sliding Doors' is Paltrow-worthy
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