On receipt of news of terminal illness, there are perhaps four key choices that any of us would have to make:
- On receipt of such news, in the short term, how would we choose to respond, say, by going to pieces or by remaining calm?
- Who, if anyone, would we choose to share the news with? Family? Friends?
- How would we choose to spend our remaining days? Would we spend our time putting our affairs in order or, exploiting a release from future consequences, throw caution to the wind and fill our time with wild debauchery?
- Where would we choose to die?
"My Life Without Me" is the story of Ann (Sarah Polley), a young Canadian mother of two living in straitened circumstances in a mobile trailer home in her mother's (Deborah Harry) back yard, who goes to the doctor with symptoms of early pregnancy (nausea, stomach cramps and so on) only to learn that she has an inoperable tumour and has at most two or three months left to live. If this sounds like the premise of a traditional weepy, a sentimental drama "based on a true story", well, certainly for Ann the stakes could not be any higher. There is strong emotional content in the film, but the emotions are true emotions, and muted more often than amplified, and the high quality of the acting and direction lifts the story above clichéd dramatics to a level of apparent realism and authenticity.
In response to the news of her imminent death, rather than going all to pieces, Ann responds in an admirably level-headed way. Seeking to maximise the time she has left, she makes out a list of things to do before she dies. It is the nature of this "To Do" list, and the other choices she makes in response to the news that make this story compelling, particularly given the particular circumstances of her life, which emerge during the course of the film.
The lynchpin of the film is the performance of Polley, and she is totally believable in the role, portraying a young woman of intelligence, courage, determination and heart. She is so good with the girls who play her daughters (Jessica Amlee, Kenya Jo Kennedy) that it's hard to believe she is not their mother in real life. The supporting cast is uniformly good: Julian Richings as the doctor, Scott Speedman and especially Mark Ruffalo, respectively, Ann's husband and Ann's admirer, Deborah Harry and Alfred Molina as Ann's parents, Amanda Plummer, Leonor Watling, and Maria de Medeiros as Ann's friends, neighbours, co-workers, acquaintances.
The script is intelligent and the direction is unostentatious. The story is based on the book "Pretending the Bed Is a Raft" by Nanci Kincaid, and the scene where Anne acts out with the girls on the bed being on a raft, beset by dangers of different kinds, is a wonderful scene, one that as a parent I envy, like the scene in Crash (2004) where the admirably resourceful Daniel (Michael Peña) calms his daughter's fears of neighbourhood drive-by shootings with the invention of an invisible bullet-proof fairy cloak.
References
- Director: Isabel Coixet
- Writers: Isabel Coixet, Nanci Kincaid
- Starring: Sarah Polley, Scott Speedman, Mark Ruffalo, Deborah Harry, Amanda Plummer, Leonor Watling, Maria de Medeiros, Julian Richings, Alfred Molina
- Rating: Full price
- When seen: 17 Aug 2011
- Where seen: Home
- More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia
Written in WriteRoom, formatted using HyperEdit, posted from my MacBook Pro
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