Twice Upon A Yesterday

Maybe it's a reflection of our president's knack for escaping the consequences of past actions, but movies about cosmic loopholes seem to be enjoying popularity. Giving the stiff-upper-lip Sliding Doors a jolt of brio is Spanish director María Ripoll's similarly London-set Twice upon a Yesterday. Victor Bukowski (Douglas Henshall, his seediness doing credit to his character's namesake) has been in rough shape since some extracurricular shenanigans brought on by the high spirits of a neighborhood Mardi Gras (set in a Notting Hill a lot more culturally correct than the hit movie of the same name) ended his engagement with straitlaced Sylvia (Lena Headey). Lamenting before yet another bartender (who's played in a perplexing cameo by Elizabeth McGovern), he's guided to the care of a pair of magical garbage collectors, who enable him to return to the past scene of the crime and amend his indiscretion. What Victor didn't figure on, though, is the intercession of bookstore clerk and wanna-be writer Louise (Penélope Cruz), or the romantic misjudgment of Sylvia, who proves no better than she should be. Without venturing far beyond the conventions of romantic comedy, Ripoll offers glimpses of worlds of possibility as she indulges in a very Spanish taste for the paradoxes of time and true love.

-- Peter Keough