Main Cast: Rebecca Frith, Rachel Griffiths, David Roberts, Sandy Winton, Yael Stone, Shaun Loseby, Trent Sullivan
Release Year: 1999
Country: FR/AU
Run Time: 104 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
Most people have regrets in life, and many would like to find out how things would be if they had done a few things differently, but few people ever get to do anything about it. Pamela Drury (Rachel Griffiths), however, gets just that chance. While she has a solid career as a journalist, Pamela is single and very depressed about it -- so much so that on her birthday she tries to commit suicide in her bathtub, but fails miserably. The next day Pamela spots a woman who could be her double, and she sees that she's married to Robert (David Roberts), an old flame she often wishes she had married when she had the chance 13 years earlier. After a brief encounter with her doppelganger, the other woman disappears and Pamela is mistaken for Robert's wife; she decides to go along for the ride, complete with three children and a home in the suburbs. Pamela quickly discovers that life as a housewife is not all she imagined it to be (especially cleaning up after the baby), and while Pamela has high hopes of some romantic evenings with Robert, it's obvious that the spark was smothered in this marriage some time ago. Curiously enough, Pamela now finds that her best friend is suddenly single, and Ben (Sandy Winton), a man who had shown a bit of interest in Pamela before, is now quite keen on finding out if she would cheat on her husband. This fantasy was enthusiastically received at the Telluride, Boston, and Toronto Film Festivals in 1999. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Review
Pip Karmel's modestly inspired piece of romantic-comedy fluff merits a viewing almost solely on the virtues of the wry, acerbic Rachel Griffiths, who proves here that she can carry a warm leading role as well as she commands attention from the sidelines of more serious fare. Karmel's script requires the audience to buy into the age-old cliché that a single, professional, thirty-something woman will be near-suicidal without a man by her side, but after that, it's Griffiths' movie, and she manages to bring a fresh, independent slant to the usual rhythms of the female-empowerment comedy. Me Myself I doesn't shy away from the messier aspects of its central conceit: Griffiths' alter-ego character's children are in on her metaphysical switch in personality; and her struggles with alternate forms of birth control are the sort of hilariously vulgar details a Hollywood production would have left on the cutting room floor. Though Karmel stacks the deck in the film's last act -- favoring one lifestyle over another -- she at least avoids the dim, simpering homilies of such lesser fare as Sliding Doors (1998) or The Family Man (2000). ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide
Pamela Drury (Rachel Griffiths) is single and works as a serious journalist. She is unsatisfied and looking for a man in her life, but keeps thinking of Robert Dickson (David Roberts), whom she rejected 13 years ago. She then meets an interesting man, Ben (Sandy Winton) and follows him home, only to see through the window that he has a family. Later she is hit by a car.
The woman who drove the car is Pamela Dickson (Griffiths) - herself in another possible life, married to Robert. She takes her home, and the two of them talk in the kitchen. Suddenly the kids come home and Pamela Dickson disappears, leaving 'our' Pam in a house she has never seen before with three children she does not know. The children assume she is their mother, although they do not quite recognize her sometimes.
She soon finds out that her alter ego Pamela Dickson lives in a dull marriage, and writes lightweight articles for a mainstream ladies magazine. She happens to meet Ben again, who in this time-line is a widower. She also manages to wake up Robert's interest and possibly enliven her marriage, but at the end of the movie the two women are switched back to their former lives. Pamela Drury is single again, but goes toward a happy ending, when she meets Ben again, and finds out he is divorced, and that he seems to have dated the other Pamela for a while.
