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MOVIES / ON DVD / MY LIFE WITHOUT ME
My Life Without Me

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My Life Without Me (2003)

65%
50%
81%
N/A
N/A
N/A
65 %
Reviews Counted: 100 Fresh: 65  Rotten:35 Average Rating: 6.3/10
 
Consensus: Sarah Polley keeps this production afloat with her moving performance. Sarah Polley keeps this production afloat with her moving performance. more
 
Runtime: 1 hr 46 mins
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 the audio-books of soap operas and a job as a night janitor in a university she could never go to in the... [More]
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 [Less]

Genre: Dramas

Starring: Sarah Polley, Mark Ruffalo, Scott Speedman, Leonor Watling, Deborah Harry

Director: Isabel Coixet
Screenwriter: Isabel Coixet
Producer: Esther Garcia, Gordon McLennan

DVD Info

Release:

Dec 2, 2005

[DVD Details]

DVD Features:

  • Region 1
  • Keep Case
  • Widescreen

Audio:

  • Dolby Digital Stereo - English

Additional Release Material:

  • Trailers
  • Featurette - 1. Making Of

Reviews

 
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1 - 20 (sorted by date; UK critics are listed first)
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Full Review | Comment
12/30/06 05:57 AM
Empire Magazine
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N/R

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Full Review | Comment
02/09/06 03:16 AM
Derek Adams
Time Out
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N/R

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Full Review | Comment
01/15/04 05:20 PM
Guardian [UK]
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Ratings Image

Coixet's dignified, heartfelt little indie drama proves that dying young doesn't always come with the schmaltz of a Julia Roberts movie. Outstanding.

Full Review | Comment
11/05/03 05:19 PM
Jamie Russell
BBC
Top Critic Icon Top Critic
Ratings Image

My Life Without Me is an impressively acted, uplifting, thoughtful film that transcends its seemingly depressing subject matter. Highly recommended.

Full Review | Comment
10/26/03 08:17 AM
Matthew Turner
ViewLondon
Ratings Image

While the subject matter sounds morbid and depressing, the film is anything but! It vibrates with real life rhythms of speech and relationships

Full Review | Comment
09/04/03 05:18 PM
Rich Cline
Shadows on the Wall
Ratings Image

A gigantically amoral cliche of a film.

Full Review | Comment
04/01/07 03:53 AM
Boyd van Hoeij
european-films.net
Ratings Image

Fascinating.

Full Review | Comment
12/06/05 07:54 PM
David Grove
Film Threat
Ratings Image

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.

Full Review | Comment
09/26/05 03:16 AM
Sarah Kaufman
Washington Post
N/R

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Full Review | Comment
07/21/05 03:46 AM
Houston Chronicle
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(...) 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.

Full Review | Comment
09/16/04 09:00 PM
Enrique Buchichio
Uruguay Total
Ratings Image

A grande força (do filme) reside na poderosa performance da jovem Sarah Polley.

Full Review | Comment
05/14/04 12:44 AM
Pablo Villaca
Cinema em Cena
Ratings Image

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.

Full Review | Comment
05/10/04 08:16 AM
Greg Muskewitz
eFilmCritic.com
Ratings Image

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…

Full Review | Comment
03/30/04 04:35 PM
Matt Kelemen
Las Vegas CityLife
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Full Review | Comment
02/02/04 05:19 PM
Paul Sherman
Boston Herald
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Plagued by phony poetic moments and self-conscious quirkiness (Maria de Medeiros appears as a braid-wearing hair stylist obsessed with Milli Vanilli...)

Full Review | Comment
01/19/04 08:43 AM
John Beifuss
Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN)
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A shameless, rather dull disease-of- the-week weeper.

Full Review | Comment
01/05/04 02:11 PM
Jim Lane
Sacramento News & Review
Ratings Image

Gets that messy emotional juncture between bruised torment and naked despair just right

Full Review | Comment
12/31/03 05:03 PM
Prairie Miller
Long Island Press
Ratings Image

It takes considerable sleight of hand, and a certain temerity, to fashion an uplifting tale about death. Yet My Life Without Me pulls it off.

Full Review | Comment
12/11/03 06:02 PM
Duane Dudek
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Ratings Image

My Life Without Me thematizes the perennial problem of identifying with characters.

Full Review | Comment
12/05/03 08:21 AM
Cynthia Fuchs
PopMatters
1 - 20 (sorted by date; UK critics are listed first)
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Related Forums

REEL_REVIEWER
MY LIFE WITHOUT ME is a poignant drama of a young mother - get out yer hankies?
by: REEL_REVIEWER 6/15/07


REEL_REVIEWER
MY LIFE WITHOUT ME is a poignant drama of a young mother - get out yer hankies?
by: REEL_REVIEWER 6/15/07


REEL_REVIEWER
MY LIFE WITHOUT ME is a poignant drama of a young mother - get out yer hankies?
by: REEL_REVIEWER 6/15/07


REEL_REVIEWER
MY LIFE WITHOUT ME is a poignant drama of a young mother - get out yer hankies?
by: REEL_REVIEWER 6/15/07


soundtrack
by: dreabea 4/1/04
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