My Life Without Me **** (2003, Sarah Polley, Mark Ruffalo, Scott Speedman) – Classic Movie Review 1269

Writer-director Isabel Coixet’s 2003 Canadian-Spanish co-production is a great tearjerker.

Sarah Polley tugs expertly at the heartstrings as a 23-year-old wife and mother dying of ovarian cancer in this depressing, but exquisitely done and warmly affecting weepie. Her doctor (Julian Richings) tells her that she has only two months to live, so she compiles a list of things to do before she dies. Concealing her terminal cancer, she resolves to try to live her life with a passion she never exhibited previously.

Polley’s character Ann enjoys a happy life living in her trailer home in her mother’s garden with her handsome husband Don (Scott Speedman) and two kids. Yet high on her list of things to do is that she wants a fling another man before she dies. That man turns out to be Lee (Mark Ruffalo).

You’ll need lots of tissues for the big tear-jerking finish. Deborah Harry is surprisingly effective as Polley’s mom. Leonor Watling, Amanda Plummer, Julian Richings, Maria de Medeiros, Jessica Amlee, Kenya Jo Kennedy, Alfred Molina and Sonja Bennett also co-star.

Coixet’s screenplay is based on Nanci Kincaid’s book Pretending the Bed is a Raft.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1269

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