''My Life Without Me'' is a 2003 Spanish-Canadian

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super-g ...

directed by

Isabel Coixet Isabel Coixet Castillo (; born 9 April 1960 ) is a Spanish film director. She is one of the most prolific film directors of contemporary Spain, having directed twelve feature-length films since the beginning of her film career in 1988, in additio ...

and starring Sarah Polley, Mark Ruffalo, Scott Speedman, and

Leonor Watling Leonor Elizabeth Ceballos Watling (born 28 July 1975) is a Spanish film actress and singer. Early life Leonor Ceballos Watling was born on 28 July 1975 in Madrid, to a Spanish father from Province of Cádiz, Cádiz and an English mother, the ...

. Based on the 1997 short story collection ''Pretending the Bed Is a Raft'' by

Nanci Kincaid Nanci Pierce Kincaid (born September 5, 1950) is an American novelist who wrote a short story collection titled ''Pretending the Bed Is a Raft'' (1997), as well as novels ''Crossing Blood'' (1991), ''Balls'' (1999), ''Verbena'' (2002), and ''As Hot ...

, it tells a story of a 23-year-old woman, with a husband and two daughters, who finds out she is going to die soon. The film is an

El Deseo El Deseo (also known as El Deseo S.A.) is a film production company owned by Spanish film producers the Almodóvar brothers (Pedro and Agustín). The company has financed all the films directed by Pedro starting from The Law of Desire in 198 ...

and My Life Productions co-production.

Plot

Ann is a hard-working 23-year-old mother with two young daughters, an unemployed husband, a mother who sees her life as a failure, and a jailed father whom she has not seen for ten years. Her life changes dramatically when, during a medical checkup following a collapse, she is diagnosed with metastatic

ovarian cancer Ovarian cancer is a cancerous tumor of an ovary. It may originate from the ovary itself or more commonly from communicating nearby structures such as fallopian tubes or the inner lining of the abdomen. The ovary is made up of three different c ...

and told that she has only two months to live. Deciding not to tell anyone of her condition and using the cover of

anemia Anemia or anaemia (British English) is a blood disorder in which the blood has a reduced ability to carry oxygen due to a lower than normal number of red blood cells, or a reduction in the amount of hemoglobin. When anemia comes on slowly, th ...

, Ann makes a list of things to do before she dies. She decides to change her hair, record birthday messages for the girls for every year until they're 18, and tries to set up her husband with another woman. Feeling a longing to experience a life that was never available to her, she seeks out a man to experience how it feels to be in a sexual relationship with someone other than her husband. Her experiment ends up taking an emotional toll when she meets with a man named Lee, who ends up madly in love with her and is left heartbroken when Ann breaks it off with him. He meets with her one last time and says that he will do anything to make her happy, taking care of her daughters and even finding her husband a new job. She ends their relationship and never tells him that she is dying. At the end of the film, Ann records a message to her husband, telling him that she loves him, and another one to Lee, telling him the same. She then leaves all tapes that she has recorded with her doctor, asking him to deliver them after her death.

Cast

* Sarah Polley as Ann * Scott Speedman as Don, Ann's Husband * Mark Ruffalo as Lee *

Deborah Harry Deborah Ann Harry (born Angela Trimble; July 1, 1945) is an American singer, songwriter and actress, best known as the lead vocalist of the band Blondie. Four of her songs with the band reached on the US charts between 1979 and 1981. Born in ...

as Ann's Mother * Jessica Amlee as Penny, Ann's Daughter * Kenya Jo Kennedy as Patsy, Ann's Daughter * Amanda Plummer as Laurie, Ann's Friend *

as Ann, The Neighbor * Maria de Medeiros as The Hairdresser *

Julian Richings Julian Richings (born 30 August 1956)''Births, Marriages & Deaths Index of England & Wales, 1916–2005.''; at Ancestry.com is a British-Canadian character actor. He has appeared in over 225 films and television series. Career After touring th ...

as Dr. Thompson * Alfred Molina as Ann's Father

Reception

Box office

The film was released on September 26, 2003 and ran for 12 weeks. It grossed $400,948 in the USA and $9,326,006 from markets in other countries, for a worldwide total of $9,726,954.

Critical response

''My Life Without Me'' received generally positive reviews from film critics. Review aggregator

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

reports a 65% approval rating, with an average rating of 6.32/10, based on 100 reviews. The site's consensus reads: "Sarah Polley keeps this production afloat with her moving performance".

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, another review aggregator, gives the film an average score of 57/100 based on 31 critics, indicatind "mixed or average reviews".

Accolades

The film won many international and festival awards, including the

Genie Award The Genie Awards were given out annually by the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television to recognize the best of Canadian cinema from 1980–2012. They succeeded the Canadian Film Awards (1949–1978; also known as the "Etrog Awards," for scu ...

for Best Actress (Polley), the Goya Award for Best Adapted Screenplay (Coixet), and Best Song ("Humans Like You" by Chop Suey).

References

External links

* * * {{Authority control 2003 films English-language Canadian films English-language Spanish films Canadian drama films Spanish drama films Films shot in Vancouver Films directed by Isabel Coixet Sony Pictures Classics films 2003 drama films Films about cancer Films about death Films produced by Agustín Almodóvar El Deseo films 2000s English-language films 2000s Canadian films 2000s Spanish films 2003 independent films Canadian independent films