User reviews

Ann lives in a trailer with her considerate but not very thought-provoking husband and their two children. The trailer is very crowded and so is Anna's life. A mother at 17 Anna has never had any time to ponder about her life but she knows it might not be very fulfilling. When she finds out that she is terminally ill she has to face the choices she has made and that was made for her. She decides to make a list of all the things she wants do in the short time she has left, both big and small. This is where Mark Ruffalos character, a considerate and thought-provoking love-interest, makes an entrance.

This films moves slowly towards the inevitable end without ever becoming boring. The relationships between the characters are displayed by emotions and subtlety rather than words. The film has a very sad theme but is in many ways very hopeful. It shows that life can trap people down but also that every person has something special which can be used to change lives. I found this film to be warm, unsentimental, thoughtful, sad and uplifting. A bit like life itself.

If you liked this film as much as I did I can recommend Wilbur wants to kill himself and Before sunset.

Something very positive happens in Hollywood and Indy films lately. Strong female roles ceased to be rare roles that are usually portrayed by Jodie Foster. More and more, lately, there is an abundance of strong female characters and more importantly, many actresses who can do these roles the justice they (both roles and actresses) deserve. Today there is a tremendous buzz over Scarlet Johansson (assuming she didn't waste it all on "The perfect score" which hadn't been released in Israel, yet). But Scarlet is not the only member on the ever growing list of actresses in their 20's with the maturity I'll probably never have (and I'm entering to my 30's), other actresses that pop into mind are Piper perabo (Lost and delirious), Maggie Gylenhaal (Secretary, Mona lisa smile) and Thora Birch (American beauty, Ghost world) to name just a few.

In this film a "new" actress named Sarah Polley (she has the filmography many veteran actresses wish to have) emerges successfully from the pernicious world of child acting into a mature woman for her age which is, coincidentally the basic premise of the character she portrays.

Ann is a 23 year old mother who is notified that because of a malignant tumour, her death is near. Ann decides, after her initial shock (maybe the best scene in the film) to accomplish a couple of assignments before passing away, one of which is to conceal the fact of her illness from her family in the rationalization of sparing them the endless hours of waiting in hospital friendly corridors and consuming hospital gourmet food. Ann spends the last two months of her life patching things with her long incarcerated father, develop a romantic fling with a pensive heart broken guy (Mark Ruffalo) and looks for an agreeable sucssessor mother to her family, among other things. This film has the idea and the cast to make it one of the best films 2003 had to offer but somewhere along the line, the emotional charge that this plot encompasses never comes to full exploitation and i found myself wondering if the movie's writer/director Isabel Coixet (i have no idea how to pronounce this name), in her attempt to make the movie optimistic and not just outright depressing, wrongfully decided to avoid emotional obstacles in her script and her direction. Another detail that bothers me in the film is what I refer to as the "Hollywooditis decease". This decease is a terminal one, but those who get it look absolutely great until the very last day of their lives. I don't pretend to be a doctor but it seems to me that a person with terminal cancer can't explain his/her fatigue simply by Anemia, Ann's cover story.

But I dwell on the negative and in films its usually a dumn thing to do. The right thing to do is to make the overall judgement, the film is undoubtly good, Polley's performance is excellent and Debby Harry (Blondie's lead singer) is surprisingly good, but the movie leaves the viewer with the feeling it had the potential of being a masterpiece, which it isn't.

8.5 out of 10 in my FilmOmeter

"My Life Without Me" shows off Sarah Polley's beauty and acting that has been clear to her fans since her "Avonlea" days.

In writer/director Isabel Coixet's first English language feature, Polley takes what could have been a drippy, maudlin story of a dying young mother and turns it into a clear-eyed path to accepting early death and taking charge of the hand that's dealt you. This delicate view is in sharp contrast to Hollywood tripe like "Sweet November" where beautiful healthy women in denial die of Movie Star Disease.

When Polley's "Ann" gets her death sentence from a doctor who can't even look her in the eyes, she resolves, among other items on her "To Do Before I Die" list, to tell it like it is -- but finds that instead everyone around her spills out their inner-most problems and she doesn't get to, including an amusing effort to get a Milli Vanilli-loving hairdresser to cut her hair like she wants it. Perhaps it's because she chooses to lie to them about her imminent demise. Not only does Polley get to use her full-fledged Canadian accent complete with "Eh"s, but until I read it on her imdb bio I didn't know that when she was 11 Polley lost her mother to cancer, so she must have had personal experience to draw on.

The imdb credits do not include that the script is based on a short story by Nanci Kincaid, "Pretending the Bed is a Raft," with additional inspiration from a poem about a young women's death by John Berger, who is thanked prominently in the credits. The symbolism of Ann having met her husband at the last Nirvana concert is also played upon several times.

The music selections are lovely, both the romantic-sounding European ballads from one character's sister's DJ mix tape and the original music by Alfonso Vilallonga, that are poignant and keep out the schmaltz.

Polley's supporting actors are wonderful, from the lively children to Amanda Plummer, who has been MIA from films for a while, and Debbie Harry as the depressed mother.

There's a couple of resonances of the TV show "Felicity" as not only does "Ann" leave voiced-over audio tapes to her loved ones, but, yikes, even dying, "Ann" gets both gorgeous sensitive hunks Scott Speadmen and Mark Ruffalo to love her. It's effectively shown, though, that one was the love of an adolescence that ended too soon with parental responsibilities and the other of her too-short adulthood.

I picked up the cover of this film several times before I rented it. The subject somewhat interested me but I also thought it was too familiar, almost like a cliché. (Someone finds out he/she is dying and it changes his/her life.) There are so many reasons why I am now so glad that I finally did rent it and I am sure most of them have been covered by other user-comments. The acting was convincing, the soundtrack was great etc. but what I liked most and what moved me most was how it sincerely and beautifully conveyed messages of love, not only Ann's love of her family, friends and lovers but the love she found of herself and of life itself, awakened by the discovery of her untimely death.

I watched the film by myself and I recommend that you do so also, not because you will get emotional and may start to cry, which you might, but because you will probably be more honest to yourself in your thoughts if you are all alone. If you are dishonest to yourself you are leading a life without you.

This is without a doubt, the saddest, but most beautiful movie I have ever seen. It really touched me. The acting is superb, the plot heartrending and thought provoking, and the cinematography outstanding. I spent 2 hours blubbering like a schoolgirl, and it was worth every second. The simple fact that one's life can seem not to have started until the point where one's own mortality is realized is a revelation to me. This movie has opened my eyes to the importance of life and love. Money, power, fame, all are fleeting and can be lost in a moment to illness, famine, war, or fate. It is those around us, and our relationships to them, that are the things to be held most dear in our final accounting.

Movies based on this topic have immense space to showcase many aspects of an individual's life directly or indirectly affected. Like a one Korean movie Wedding Dress too had a same concept which really made me and wife emotional in number of moments. However, starting with a high hope, this one dint touched my feelings to say that yes i started caring about the cancer patient, virtually. It revolved around doing things and completing ones long lasting wishes, which was a great approach, but as story grew, i felt away from it rather getting close.

So yaa, to me just an above average stuff and only one time watch.

Really, this film should be too much to bear. An attractive young mother discovers she has 2 months to live and sets about trying to make use of her time doing things for herself and the people she loves; but keeping her diagnosis to herself. The film intentionally concentrates on the start of this period, allowing it to soft-focus the pain, and from a certain perspective, everything works out with an almost synthetic convenience. And yet this is a great film. All the performances are spot on (even Debbie Harry is great against type), and it's full of humour, not black death-defying humour but the life-affirming humour of everyday life. Additionally, the film is wonderfully constructed, both in the skill with which it moves between scenes and also in the larger way the story in told (the entire plot is structured around an eventual suicide that is only implied) - cloyingness is averted through the confidence the director has in the tale and the cast. Death is surely never this romantic, but in its own way this film is as harrying as Mike Nicholls' 'Wit'. A painful film, but one that makes you glad to be alive.

If you are in the mood to cry and be moved and touched then this is the movie for you. Even though it has a very sad story line...it doesn't leave you extremely depressed like most sad movies do. The movie is very well done both artistically and acting wise. The main character is so beautiful but in a very real way. I think that's one reason why it is so easy to relate to this women and her life. She is a very strong women through her last few months before she knows she's going to die, which I find to be very refreshing, compared to just watching a sad, depressed, angry women dying. When I tell people what this movie is about they usually don't seem very enthusiastic about seeing a movie about a women who knows she's going to die, but let me just say it is so much more than just that! I would definitely recommend this movie to anyone that is sensitive and deep and compassionate. I loved it. It also makes you really look at your life and makes you want to live life to the fullest. Give it a try!

This film was such a wonderful surprise. Great acting, writing and direction at a perfect pace. I can't believe this movie went by as quickly as it did.

It sounds corny and cliché, but "My Life" truly spoke to me. Both endearing and engaging, the story took me on a fulfilling emotional journey.

The cast is brilliant, and Sarah Polley has proved beyond a doubt that she is an actor extraordinaire. Her performance is well worth high praise.

You will not be disappointed.

A film from Canada, "My Life Without Me" is an understated account of a terminally ill woman's attempt to find meaning in her life before she dies. Anne is a 23-year old custodian who lives with her pool-cleaning husband and two daughters in a trailer behind her mother's house. When she receives the stunning news that she has only a few months to live, Anne decides to spend her remaining time doing all the things she never had a chance to do after she married and had her first child at seventeen. One of those goals involves having sex with someone besides her husband and getting a man to fall in love with her.

"My Life Without Me" approaches a tricky subject with sensitivity and a minimum of sentimentality, helping the movie to steer away from the soap opera trappings of its story. The film avoids overstating the unhappiness of Anne's life, making it clear that, while she may not exactly be living in the lap of luxury, she does have a loving husband who cares deeply about her, as well as two young girls who are obviously the apple of their mother's eye. This makes Anne's desire to break away and find something better both more perplexing and more poignant than if her domestic life were harrowing and dismal. With the new perspective that dying affords her, Anne begins to see how we spend our days in a futile effort to divert our attention from the reality that we will all one day die. Anne makes recordings for all the people who have meant something to her in her life, helping them to not only cope with her death but to find some meaning and happiness in the lives they are still living.

Sarah Polley gives a beautiful, heartbreaking performance as Anne, never allowing her character to become an object of pity despite the fact that she is a person being stricken down in the prime of her life. Her restrained style is matched by that of Deborah Harry as her bitter, eternally disappointed mother, Scott Speedman as her understanding husband, Mark Ruffalo as the man with whom she falls in love, and a whole host of other superb actors.

Although it veers a little too close to slick Harlequin romance at times (the too-good-to-be-true husband, the conveniently available one-true-love paramour), "My Life Without Me" is a subtle, heartfelt film that touches the emotions even as it gives the mind something to think about. The lovely closing scene is as thought provoking as it is moving, a fitting finale to a quiet little gem of a film.

The plot of this beautiful film seems a trivial melodrama, but the way it was told by scriptwriter/director Isabel Coixet makes a great difference. What could have turned into a hollow movie only made to make you cry, became a deep, witty and truly heartbreaking personal journey into a young woman's mind, Ann (beautifully performed by Sarah Polley). Ann is 23 years old, has two little daughters and one attentive husband, Don (Scott Speedman). They're poor and live in a trailer settled down at Ann's mother's back yard, but they're happy. When Ann gets to know that she has a terminal cancer which is going to kill her in a couple of months, she decides to live to the fullest - and doesn't tell anyone about her weak health state.

Isabel Coixet led everything wonderfully, and the entire cast is magnificent (even Scott Speedman is pretty good). Amanda Plummer, as Ann's obsessed-with-food friend, proves definitely her taste for bizarre characters (what's far from being a fault, in her case); Deborah Harry is surprising as Ann's bitter mother; Mark Ruffalo (one of the best actors nowadays), as a lonely man who falls in love with Ann, is captivating and passionate, and Leonor Watling is not only a beautiful Spanish girl. Maria de Medeiros and Alfred Molina enrich the film with their small parts. Everyone is great, but Sarah Polley definitely rules. She is much more talented than 95% of current Hollywood young "stars". Gwyneth Paltrow, for instance, would be ridiculous as Ann; but as Sarah Polley hasn't got 'starpower', she didn't even get an Oscar nomination. It's OK. Sarah doesn't need an Academy Award to prove her talent, and we won a great actress.

Isabel Coixet is a great director, one of the best Spanish directors.The film is beautiful, fantastic. It's a sad film, but incredible, a great job. Sarah Polley, Scott Speedman, Mark Ruffalo and Leonor Watling do a great job, and of course,Debora Harris. The story is the best for me, full of feelings.The music is so beautiful that you should hear it until the end of the film,when only appear the name of the actors.The character of Sarah Polley is a young girl with a lot of dreams that she wants to complete before her dead. She only has two months of life, but she don't say anything to her family. She wants to enjoy her life and prepare all for the life of her family when she don't live.

Why do film makers insist in presenting their stories in such unrealistic ways? The subject of this movie, by Catalan director Isabel Coixet, and based on a story by Nanci Kincaid, is about a romantic side of dying. Ms. Coixet needs a dose of reality, or maybe she needs to visit a hospital to see what really goes on.

If you haven't seen the film, please stop reading here.

The idea of dying young, and beautiful, when suffering a terminal disease, has been done before. "Love Story" comes to mind, with a beautiful Ali McGraw never changing one iota, so the adoring public can have a good cry, but not be grossed out by watching the heroine going through hell. Alas, nothing like that happens in life.

The film is not unpleasant to watch, thanks to the luminous Sarah Polley, who is at the center of the story. Ann seems to be down to earth. Her relationship with her own mother is strained, at best. Her father is in jail for reasons that are not revealed. Her marriage to the boy next-door type, seems to be fine, but obviously it is not.

When informed of her short time to live, Ann, goes numb, but she decides to do things differently. She suddenly takes a good look at herself. She goes shopping, inviting friends for dinner, getting into an affair with a dreamy hunk and dictating her memoirs so that her daughters will have an idea why she did things her own way.

The problem with the script is that it is false. Not having read the book, one can't make any comparison, but probably the screen play was modified for the film box office appeal, or because Pedro Almodovar, whose company is backing the movie, told Ms. Coixet to lighten it. There are inconsistencies with the way the story plays.

Going back to Almodovar, we have Leonor Watling, and Pedro's latest favorite muse, as the next door neighbor. In a sequence that is designed to have to make the public cry, this other Ann, proceeds to tell her neighbor about her experience with Siamese twins in the hospital where she is a nurse. One was a boy and the other one was a girl and she watched the infants die! Well, hello, Ms. Coixet and Ms. Kincaid, since when Siamese twins have different sexes? That's a first one for the medical books.

While the film is not overtly weepy, it is not dealing with a full deck. Watch it at your own risk.

I have found many people on the IMDb not being able to empathyse with the main character the way I did. At first it was only people whom I considered were not making very intelligent remarks, but after a while I noticed some people who seemed to be intelligent and weren't able to empathyse either. After giving the idea some thought, I have come up with the impression that this might have being caused by subtle cultural differences. Coixet, the director and screen-play writer, is from Spain, being more precise, she is Catalan. Up to now she has released three more films, two of them more than acceptable and the third is as good as My life without me. In her films you can always find sensitive female characters (as in this one) that go through some kind of series traumatic events (though not necessarily terminal as in this). In this film and in Thing I never told you, she uses a brilliant resource to let us know more about her characters'm inner world: she uses confessions. In My life without me Sarah Polleys character's records cassettes to congratulate her daughters every birthday until their 18th birthday. Those confessions are absolutely brilliant, they show a sensitivity that is seldom seen in any work of art.

Everyone's performance is exceptional, the two little girls included. Amanda Plummer's performance and character are incredibly funny. I can only recommend you to Give the film a try but always bear in mind that no matter how Anglo-Saxon this film looks, it has been directed and written by a Spaniard, we are not Asian, but ours is still a different culture and you might find some character's actions not as normal as you would have expected.

A 24 year old woman (Polley) is given her last days to live. Living in a trailer in her Mother's backyard with her newly employed husband and two small children, there are not many options for someone in Polley's shoes. She's not about to go around the world or skydive, et al. So, she's spends her last days preparing cassette's for each of daughters next 10 birthdays and living out her normal existence except for the fact of having an affair with the sadder Mark Ruffalo. The voice overs of Polley's thoughts either while she is shopping in a supermarket or hanging the laundry are beautiful thoughts of introspection that we often do not think about yet are so profound. hence the Kleenex. There are some beautifully drawn out character's here with back stories and faces of those of us. I especially loved the neighbor Ann, the doctor, and of course Ruffolo whose somber voice brings you into the usually solemn people that he portrays. As if the song, "God Only Knows" by the Beachboy's, the couple of versions sung here are great fillers. Polley gives an excellent performance with her affected Canadian accent of a girl who got pregnant at seventeen and really had prospectfull life ahead of her, yet the love that she gives others is very unselfish. It's a good film. We are all gonna die, so this is not a chick flick.

This movie is well played. A fantastic tear jerker involving a young woman who is dealing with her impending death. Sarah Polley turns in a beautiful performance as a woman fulfilling her "Things to do before I Die" list.

Scott Speedman gives a wonderful performance as a loving husband and father. Mark Ruffalo is easy to fall in love with and easy to believe. Additional performances by Amanda Plummer and Deborah Harry add to this tale of grief and happiness. An uncredited appearance from Alfred Molina is both touching and filled with a daughter's love for her father.

Watch it alone. Soak it in and wonder what you would do if you were her. Be angry and happy, tearful and joyful in this emotion packed film.