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.
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
My Life Without Me thematizes the perennial problem of identifying with characters.
It's not likely the viewer will get much from these experiences, either, altough the movie does have an ear for the mordantly funny line.
My Life Without Me only has one way to go, and it makes some dippy turns getting there. But Polley makes the trip worth it.
A good example of how Polley elevates nearly everything in which she appears.
Polley's performance is pitch-perfect, and that the world described herein -- glazed with humor as well as melancholy -- is devoid of phony sentiment.
Ann's melodramatic take on death is, in the end, selfish and cruel to those she loves.
Curiously, this weepy drama seems a little flatter, less involving, than it should. Especially with a cast like this.
A strangely grim affair that will stretch the patience of more than a few viewers.
Depressingly unmoving, thanks to unaffecting performances and a story that holds no surprises.
Everything is so picture-perfect that it plays like hackneyed fiction rather than the real-life drama to which it aspires.
...pulls out all the stops to elicit the requisite emotions from the audience, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
It could have easily toppled over into the maudlin. That it doesn't is due in tremendous part to Polley's effortless performance as Ann.
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