FILM-FORWARD.COMReviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
MY LIFE WITHOUT ME
A health crisis reawakens the higher consciousness of 23-year-old Ann, played
by Sarah Polley with a natural beauty reminsicent of Julianne Moore. Ann decides to take
charge and make the best of her situation. In this race against time, Ann realizes there's no
time like the present to tap unfulfilled longings and to prepare her loved ones for what
appears to be the inevitable. Crowded with her husband and two daughters in a
trailer park home, and with a depressed mother living 20 yards away, Ann's world is
made even more enclosed when she chooses to fight her last fight in secrecy.
In the book, Pretending the Bed is a Raft, upon which the film is based, author Nanci
Kincaid has Ann share her predicament with those closest to her. Keeping Ann’s situation
to herself should not necessarily deflate the drama, but it begs the queston why Coixet
chose to exclude all of the supporting characters from Ann’s trials. In doing so, they serve
more as pawns to fulfill her checked-off grocery list of internal needs, objectives obtained
with almost no obstacles at all. But the tendency to round off the edges doesn’t stop here.
Unlike in the book, time progresses, but Ann's appearance never reflects her worsening
physical state; her unemployed husband, early on, finds a job; and an undercurrent tension
between mother and daughter barely gets beyond a ripple. The film almost continually
irons out the complexities of Ann's life. Her jailed and alienating father, whom Ann visits
after 10 years’ absence, is almost immediately repentant. And need it be mentioned that a
lover appears at just the requested moment? Although the supporting cast on the whole
delivers nicely understated performances, the film's impact suffers from a screenplay that
could have taken Ann on a more provocative soul-searching quest, but instead guides her
along a rather predictable, less engaging, and somewhat sentimental journey around the
block. Max Rennix, New York-based actor/writer
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