A young woman conceals the fact of her terminal cancer to live her life with a passion she never had before.A young woman conceals the fact of her terminal cancer to live her life with a passion she never had before.A young woman conceals the fact of her terminal cancer to live her life with a passion she never had before.
- Awards
- 16 wins & 15 nominations
Debbie Harry
- Ann's Mother
- (as Deborah Harry)
- Director
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaOriginally the film was to feature Ann recording tapes for her father and for Dr. Thompson, in which she forgives her father for being absent during her childhood, and tells Dr. Thompson that his seeing patients as people isn't a bad thing before thanking him for keeping her impending death a secret. The ending montage was also supposed to feature a video clip of Ann's dad making shoes for his granddaughters from prison with tears in his eyes. These things never even made it to the filming stage, probably because of the length of the production itself.
- GoofsWhen Ann the neighbor is talking about the conjoined twins, she says one was a girl and the other was a boy. Conjoined twins are formed from the same egg, so is generally understood that both twins should be of the same gender. However if the egg is fertilized by a male sperm but during cell division only the X chromosome is duplicated it could result in monozygotic twins of different sexes . This results in one normal male (XY) and one female with Turner syndrome.
- ConnectionsFeatures Mildred Pierce (1945)
Featured review
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
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
Helpful•3612
- eyal philippsborn
- Feb 14, 2004
- Permalink
Details
- Release date
- Countries of origin
- Official site
- Language
- Also known as
- Mi vida sin mí
- Filming locations
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Budget
- €2,000,000 (estimated)
- Gross US & Canada
- $400,948
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $40,515
- Sep 28, 2003
- Gross worldwide
- $9,781,854
- Runtime1 hour 46 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.85 : 1
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