Intelligent and affecting as the film is, it buckles under the weight of overexplicitness, a tendency to say more than it needs to.
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.
Theatrical Release:Sep 26, 2003 Limited
Box Office: $200,852
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
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Reviews for My Life Without Me
This contemplative drama manages to dodge mawkish potholes to emerge as a strangely life-affirming work.
It's hard to take this movie seriously. It's the cinematic equivalent of dotting your i's with a big heart, a very youngish view of life and death in which everything is too neatly wrapped up with a bow.
The performances are determinedly low-key, and Ms. Coixet directs even the most charged scenes in a cool, almost affectless style. But the implicit narcissism of the film's title is embraced without really being examined.
A splendid cast, coupled with Isabel Coixet's deeply committed writing and direction, goes a long way to make this movie affecting to watch even it if doesn't hold up well to reflection once the lights go up.
Life constantly rises above the mundane, mainly because there's so much that's incredibly touching and believable about Polley's character.
What is most infuriating about this film is how the audience is expected to see Anne’s selfishness as some kind of personal heroism.
Writer-director Isabel Coixet and actress Sarah Polley elevate a story we think we've seen before into truly touching, human drama.
My Life Without Me is a bold and honest film about a young woman who is forced to number her days and to fill them with as much pleasure and meaning as she can.
This isn't a poignant drama about courage and imagination -- it's a contrived fantasy about courage and imagination.
Transforming [Ann] into a woman who wants what she wants and reaches for it now, Polley not only subverts cliché but humanizes one of the most hard-heartedly malicious phrases in the American language -- trailer trash.
One of the oldest weepie plots in the book...doesn't quite transcend the essential staleness of its premise, but thanks to [Polley] it comes very close to doing so.
A movie about terminal illness that even the Lifetime Television Network might reject.
My Life Without Me is definitely one of the better movies of the year, filled with great performances, introspection, emotional tangents, a deeper appreciation of the human spirit, and most vividly, a re-affirmation of the value of one's life.
A ridiculously hokey premise carefully and thoughtfully made into shockingly compelling cinema.
| Tomatometer Percentage | Movie |
|---|---|
| 15% 15% | The Ugly Truth |
| 98% 98% | Up |
| 36% 36% | G.I. Joe: The Rise of … |
| 52% 52% | The Taking of Pelham 1… |
| 45% 45% | Ice Age: Dawn of the D… |
| Tomatometer Percentage | Movie |
|---|---|
| 36% 36% | Angels & Demons |
| 68% 68% | Funny People |
| 25% 25% | Four Christmases |
| 45% 45% | Shorts |
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