User Reviews

The young Ann (Sarah Polley) has a simple, but happy life with her husband Don (Scott Speedman) and her two daughters, Penny and Petsy. Ann works as a janitor in the nightshift, cleaning the rooms of a university, Don builds swimming pools and they live in a trailer in the backyard of Ann's mother. When Ann goes to the doctor expecting to be pregnant, she is informed that indeed she has a terminal cancer, lasting a maximum of two weeks. She hides the information from her family and prepares for her death, making a list of ten outstanding subjects in her life, including preparing tapes for the birthdays of her daughters until they are eighteen years old; eating and drinking whatever she wants; telling only the truth; finding a new wife to her husband; visiting her father in the penitentiary; and making love with another man.

When I started seeing this movie, I immediately recalled Michael Keaton's "My Life". But indeed, only part of the storyline, regarding a terminal ill person preparing for the death, is similar. It is impossible not adoring "My Life Without You". The first point for loving this movie is the outstanding direction of Isabel Coixet and performance of the cast, having inclusive the uncredited and magnificent participation of Alfred Molina, as the father of Ann, in one of the most touching scenes along the film. I do not know the criteria of the Academy to select the nominations for the Oscar, but I believe Sarah Polley deserved at least a nomination for her acting. The story, although dealing with a delicate theme, is very beautiful, sensitive, positive and never corny, due to the sensibility of Isabel Coixet. The two young girls (Jessica Amlee and Kenya Jo Kennedy) are amazing, being very natural and convincing in their performances. The soundtrack, with sad but lovely songs, completes this wonderful film. I have never heard about Siamese babies of different sexes, but I am not sure whether it is possible. My vote is eight, but I am not sure whether I am being fair.

Title (Brazil): "Minha Vida Sem Mim" ("My Life Without Me")

"My Life Without Me" stars Sarah Polley as Ann, a twenty-three year old young lady from Vancouver, British Columbia whose married and has two young daughters named Patsy (Kenya Jo Kennedy) and Penny (Jessica Amlee). She's married to a contractor husband named Don (Scott Speedman) and they reside in a trailer out in the back of her mother's (Deborah Harry) yard. After noticing physical changes to her body and weight, her introverted, but kind-hearted doctor Dr. Thompson (Julian Richings) that she has aggressive ovarian cancer and that she may only have about two to three months left to live. Feeling to keep this situation to herself without anyone knowing about it or getting the proper treatment she needs to at least stall the illness from getting worse, she instead writes up a bucket list of things she wishes to achieve before she succumbs to an eternal bliss. She programs a life-plan for her children and leaves numerous recording of birthday wishes until they're eighteenth birthday. Her list leads up to a visit from her incarcerated father (Alfred Molina) and has a relationship with another man (Mark Ruffalo).

Written and directed by Isabel Coixet, this film is based on a short story "Pretending the Bed is a Raft" by Nanci Kincaid, Ann is a strong, proud woman who wants no sympathy from anyone, keeping her disease low-profiled and just wants to continue living the life she had before the bad news erupted almost like it never happened. But the emotional level will manifest with you the entire film which makes watching this film a little painful to endure.

Coixet refrains from making this film fall into the deep streams of melancholy integrity no matter how sad this movie really is and does everything in her power to keep us from reaching into our tissue box to dry our eyes. Sure we feel the pity for Ann, but we also praise her for the decisions she makes though it can be quite foolish at times. But she manipulates her audience into not to feel overtly sad when her death draws near, while not encouraging every decision she has planned out for her. In a way "My Life Without Me' can be like a coming-of- age film about a woman finally given the things she always wanted to do, but never had a chance in her youth. She got pregnant when she was in her mid-teens, her husband was the first man she ever kissed. His job seems at times on and off and money is very tight while Ann is a janitor at a local college. She never had the opportunity to experience youth because these chains of events held her back and she has missed out on a lot.

Her bucket list seems at times quite logical; like recording birthday messages to her daughters until they reach the age of 18, she believes her neighbour (Lenore Watling) would make a great wife for Don, she pays a visit to her incarcerated father one last time, she also wants her hair and nails fixed and even goes as far as to take up drinking and smoking. She also wants to experiment adultery by sleeping with another man behind her family's back which is quite absurd. The man's name is Lee (Mark Ruffalo) who she sees very often privately and never once reveals that she is dying.

There are many scenarios that seem to to at times lack in a harmonious fashion. Sure there are some quirky characters that contribute to the much needed comic relief from this rather sentimental story. Others are really of no special purpose. Amanda Plummer plays Laurie's friend and co-worker who has a fixation about her weight and dieting and Portuguese actress Maria De Medieros was wonderful as The Hairdresser who seems to be attracted to Milli Vanilli (I wonder why?). Sure Ann's motives are inspirational but can at times be self-serving too. Coixet can't seem to parallel these two configurations though Sarah Polley was very convincing in her performance. Her curiosity to find youth was uplifting, but as always it's family comes first.

'My life without me' is a beautiful and dramatic film and I am very surprised how few people heard about this movie. I liked Sarah Polley's acting,and was nice to see Maria de Medeiros again.

Ann is a young mother,who had her first daughter when she was 17 years old,with the boyfriend(Don) she had her first kiss and her first sexual experiences. In her early 20's,she has two kids(Patsy and Penny) a low payment job, and lives in a small trailer in her mother's garden with her boyfriend Don and the two girls. One day, she decides to go to the hospital to see why she is staying sick all the time, and she discovers that she has uterine cancer and will only live for more two months. Ann decides,then, to do a list of 10 things she needs to do before she dies:

Ann: THINGS TO DO BEFORE I DIE. Ann: 1. Tell my daughters I love them several times.

Ann: 2. Find Don a new wife who the girls like.

Ann: 3. Record birthday messages for the girls for every year until they're 18.

Ann: 4. Go to Whalebay Beach together and have a big picnic. Ann: 5. Smoke and drink as much as I want.

Ann: 6. Say what I'm thinking.

Ann: 7. Make love with other men to see what it's like.

Ann: 8. Make someone fall in love with me.

Ann: 9. Go and see Dad in Jail.

Ann: 10. Get false nails. And do something with my hair.

Doing all the things in secret,without her daughters and boyfriend knows, Ann will make the last moments of her life special for her and the other people in her life.

At first when I saw the IMDb score and read the synopsis, I thought this will be a great movie... And for the first 5 or 7 minutes I had this impression. But then the movie started to slowly kill my hopes. This is a movie about a girl who discovers she is going to die and so she decides to go out and punish the whole world for it, including herself. There's a thin line between moving and pathetic. And this movie is about pathetic people, not unfortunate, poor, struggling people. First she starts off writing her list of "things to do before I die", like: telling her kids she loves them more often, finding another woman for her husband, going to the beach with her husband, going to see her dad who's in jail, smoking and drinking... But the following is where the list goes a little mischievous: 1- Record birthday messages to her 6 and 4 year old daughters until they're 18 (If they can move on, let's make sure we turn each and every birthday a depressing occasion of remembering mom is dead) 2- Have sex with other men to see what it's like (she lies to the husband -who she seems to love- about going to die and cheats on him too, no harm in that too!!) 3- Make someone fall in love with me (She seems to be in love with her husband and keeps telling him she loves him, but then she wants to torture another man by making him fall in love with her, while she's supposedly happily married and also... DYING!)

So, on top of her list is to tell her girls she loves them everyday, but instead of wanting to spend what's left of her life with her loved ones, she leaves them with the neighbor, who has just moved in, after a 5- minute talk to go and screw the new guy's life. I can understand if people decide to become a little selfish when they realize there's very little time on their hands, but to decide to be mean to her mother, to cheat on her husband, to lie to another man and make him fall in love with her and to ditch her girls with a total stranger is just pure nonsense when the plot tries to convince you she's sacrificing for everyone's sake!

There almost isn't anyone who's normal in this movie. A pathetic work colleague who's obsessed with diets and food (as in literally talking about diets/food in every scene she appears on). A pathetic grandmother who tells her grand daughters creepy stories and whines about her life in a super pathetic way. A pathetic waitress in a coffee shop who wishes to win the lottery in order to transform her looks to look like Cher! A pathetic boyfriend who has absolutely no furniture, God knows why! A pathetic father in jail who sews shoes and asks the daughter he hasn't seen in years for her daughters' shoe sizes. And ultimately a pathetic, dying, 23 year old girl who wastes entirely all the time left in her life over things that cannot even qualify to be labeled wishes, to say the least. This is it about the plot and the characters. The script is weird, creepy and makes no sense, interrupted by irrelevant, pathetic, emotionless voice-over. The acting is terrible, you can hardly sense any emotions from all actors. Like when she receives the news of her terminal cancer so she weeps for a few seconds then asks the doctor for a piece of candy! The movie is so boring, moving slowly between unreasonable events, to eventually meet the inevitable, very expected and disappointing end. I really can't get my head around why this movie scored 7.6 on IMDb!

a great movie about real people, beautifully played, very well shot the lines the characters got are great too, as are the characters them self it's interesting how the movie manages not to drag you down, how it manages to stay positive, while the main character is dying ... beautiful - watch it if you get it

i watched it by incident ... just cached it on TV and the title sounded interesting to me. now i'm very happy i stayed with this movie

--- Ann: "Now you feel like you wanna take all the drugs in the world, but all the drugs in the world aren't gonna change the feeling that your whole life's been a dream and it's only now that you're waking up."

Without a doubt this is a very nice movie. In the beginning you might fear it will be superficial but the characters take you in soon. It develops and emotional depth and there as well a lot of heart-warming scenes as there are funny ones, nearly all of them very well done. Sarah Polley is adorable and the rest of the cast delivers as well. It is all very nice ... too nice. This isn't meant cynic, but I'm missing the pain.

*slight spoilers ahead, but nothing important*

Here we have a story about a 23 year old woman with two little kids, who suffers from a tumour beyond aid and will die within two or three months. And during all this time no one really gets hurt. Of course you have and underling sadness and there are clear hints that she has pain, but non of this is shown. I for sure don't want overdramatic cliché crying scenes and I understand, that the pain is left out of the story very consciously to concentrate on here emotional and intellectual development, but this movie gives the fact of a young mother dying a somehow romantic feeling.

*no more spoilers*

I think it's to smooth for the subject and therefore not really true to the audience. Anyway I enjoyed the movie and can safely recommend it for anyone who seeks shelter from dull mass production and nevertheless wants to have a nice emotional night a the movies.

I suppose this movie is trying to be deep and insightful, but oh God, how shallow it is. There's no message which you could take from it. No character to which you could relate - they all seems hollow and unreal, they're like puppets in hands of someone with a very limited imagination.

Ann - the main character is a young and (so far) healthy individual. She have two little daughters and a loving husband. After getting the news that she has only two months to live, she make some interesting decisions. First of all, she refuse to get a second opinion and she refuse any treatment. Her initial reaction is, to sit, cry a little bit, then ask for a candy. Her next action is, to write an obligatory "things to do before I die" list, on which she put things which I can split to following groups:

1. Predictable: she decide that she'll tell her daughters that she love them every day, visit father in Jail, have a picnic with family, and say what she's (really) thinking. We don't see much of this in the movie.

2. Shallow: get some false nails (do something with hair), smoke and drink as much as she want. Those are the most interesting things she can imagine, when she know she have only two months on this earth? How sad…

3. Silly: find Don (husband) a new wife and record birthday messages for her daughters, for every year until they eighteen. I don't understand, why looking for a new wife for husband? He's not retard, he's good looking, caring young man, obviously he can find a new wife. And I suppose he should be able to choose her himself, when he feels the time is right. And why create some sad, crying messages, which her daughters supposed to listen, on every birthday, until they're eighteen!? Wouldn't that be kind of a depressing on birthdays? Why not just tell the family what's going on, and allow them to go through this with her?

4. Selfish: make love with other men to see what it is like, make someone fall in love with her. She have so little time to live, yet she desires not to spend it with family, but rather seek an affair in which one of her hopes is, that (not she) but the other person will fall in love with her. Why? She's already very much loved, her husband is portrayed as such a tender person; if he find out what she did, he'll be hurt, her daughters will be hurt. The person who she have an afar with, if he'll indeed fall in love with her, will be hurt at the end. She herself will be hurt. Hurting whole bunch of people, just so that she'll satisfy her ego and "see what it is like".

And this is how the movie is, above all we just watch her running to her new lover - even if that means leaving kids with a complete stranger and constantly lying to husband. We don't see how she's dealing with sickens, because beside throwing up occasionally, there's no signs that she's actually sick. We don't see that she'd be dealing with any mental challenges concerning the fact that she'll soon die, - her challenges are, above all, those of any adulterer: not being caught, finding time to see lover.

But even for a movie about adulterer, this one is very shallow, as she's facing no moral dilemma whatsoever. All seems so natural for her, almost as her family wouldn't consist of real people, but rather soulless dolls, being there purely to play a side role in her life. Funny enough, this is what her new lover becomes very soon too. So, she's selfish, shallow control-freak, unable to care about or love anyone but herself. Well, my guess would be then, that her illness must be some karmic balancing - hopefully in next life, she'll learn to be a bit nicer.