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My Life Without Me (2003)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:100
Fresh:65
Rotten:35
Average Rating:6.3/10
Consensus: Sarah Polley keeps this production afloat with her moving performance.
Runtime: 1 hr 46 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: Ann is 23, she has 2 daughters, a husband who spends more time unemployed than working, a mother who hates the world, a father who has spent the last ten years in jail, a strange predilection for... Ann is 23, she has 2 daughters, a husband who spends more time unemployed than working, a mother who hates the world, a father who has spent the last ten years in jail, a strange predilection for the audio-books of soap operas and a job as a night janitor in a university she could never go to in the dayime. They live in a trailer on the yard of her mother’s house, on the outskirts of Vancouver. However, this gray existence changes completely when, after a medical check-up, a shy doctor tells her that she has very little time left, hardly two months to live. Ann decides to keep her condition a secret, not to tell anybody, not even her husband. She doesn't want people around her with long faces mumbling the word "death." She starts to make a list of "things to do before dying" which she completes little by little. The list goes from "saying exactly what I think" to "getting fake fingernails." Unexpectedly, Ann discovers an appetite for life that drives her to live her last days with a sensual and furious intensity she had not known before. During that time she prepares her daughters life without her, meets a solitary wounded man who she seduces (and paradoxically brings back to life), and faces what remains of her life with a courage she never knew she had. -- © Sony Pictures Classics [More]
Starring: Sarah Polley, Mark Ruffalo, Scott Speedman, Leonor Watling
Starring: Sarah Polley, Mark Ruffalo, Scott Speedman, Leonor Watling, Deborah Harry, Amanda Plummer, Maria De Medeiros
Director: Isabel Coixet
Director: Isabel Coixet
Screenwriter: Isabel Coixet
Producer: Esther Garcia, Gordon McLennan
Studio: Sony Pictures Classics
Reviews for My Life Without Me
Coixet's dignified, heartfelt little indie drama proves that dying young doesn't always come with the schmaltz of a Julia Roberts movie. Outstanding.
My Life Without Me is an impressively acted, uplifting, thoughtful film that transcends its seemingly depressing subject matter. Highly recommended.
While the subject matter sounds morbid and depressing, the film is anything but! It vibrates with real life rhythms of speech and relationships
My Life Without Me is not a gentle film. Insistent and unforgettable, it wounds on the inside, and the scars feel fresh for some time.
(...) Una de las películas más hermosas que se hayan filmado sobre eso tan extraño y tan temido que es el tiempo que queda antes de morir.
A grande força (do filme) reside na poderosa performance da jovem Sarah Polley.
Watching My Life Without Me is enervating. Coixet is so determined not to indulge the story’s potential for sentiment that she overcompensates on the dreariness.
This is a film for people who like to cry, and there's a contrived element that's inherent to the beautiful-death genre. Still, Polley is the film's saving grace…
Plagued by phony poetic moments and self-conscious quirkiness (Maria de Medeiros appears as a braid-wearing hair stylist obsessed with Milli Vanilli...)
Gets that messy emotional juncture between bruised torment and naked despair just right
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