La vida sin mí

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.

MY LIFE WITHOUT ME (2003) ***1/2 Sarah Polley, Mark Ruffalo, Scott Speedman, Deborah Harry, Amanda Plummer, Leonor Watling, Julian Richings, Maria de Medeiros, Jessica Amlee, Kenya Jo Kennedy, Alfred Molina. Polley gives a remarkable performance as a young wife and mother who is diagnosed with terminal cancer and with the few precious months left to her own devices she decides not to tell anyone but instead attempts to live life by her own guidelines including taking a lover (Ruffalo in a genial turn) and setting her family up with a new mother figure in the form of new next door neighbor Watling (who gives a heartrending speech about her occupation as a nurse) and in the process realizing just how important it is to live life each day as if it were indeed your last. Director Isabel Coixet adapts Nanci Kincaid's short story 'Pretending the Bed is a Raft' with clear-eyed sharpness allowing the ultimate heartbreak to occur off-screen and instead focusing on the funny and poignant pangs her protagonist silently endures. A real gem that reminded me of the '70s golden age of indies.

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.

"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.