Ma vie sans moi

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.

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.

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.

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

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!