My Life Without Me review

The first English language film by Isabel Coixet is presented and executive produced by Pedro and Agustin Almodovar, so it's perfectly acceptable to expect a histrionic-filled, over-the-top soap opera of a story. Fortunately, the director does not share Almodovar's sense of the extreme: instead she tells an interesting story in a low-key way, although she fails to prevent it from becoming overly sentimental by the mid-way point.

Sarah Polley stars as Ann, a happily married young woman, who doesn't have much in the way of a good job or a nice house (she cleans at the local university and lives in a caravan in her mother's garden), but has a loving husband (Scott Speedman) and two adorable daughters. After feeling persistently ill, she visits the doctor, is referred for tests at the hospital and is told that due to an inoperable tumour she has only a matter of months to live.

Instead of a more usual course of action - breaking down in tears and relying on the help of her family - she decides not to tell anyone. Perhaps there is a slight feeling of not wanting to burden anyone with her painful and inevitable death, but she is more interested in making a list of things that she would like to do before she dies. Some are banal (getting a new haircut) while others are touching (pre-recording birthday greetings for her daughters for every year until they turn eighteen).

Top of her list however are sleeping with another man (she has only been with her husband) and finding her spouse a new wife. The first is achieved when she encounters Lee (Mark Ruffalo), a bookish engineer who becomes her lover for the last few months of her life. The second, and this is where credibility begins to stretch, looks like it might happen when an unusually beautiful and single nurse moves next door to her family.

This is an extremely well-cast film. Polley, who has become something of an indie queen in films such as Go, The Claim and The Weight of Water proves that she is one of the more understated actresses around, while Ruffalo underlines his leading man of the moment stature with another intense and slightly oddball performance.

However, direction and script fail badly in coming up with a genuinely interesting film which can last its whole running time. It's a mistake for us to learn what Polley's list will be and then simply see her carry out all of these desires for the next ninety minutes or so. There is simply no real drama to it. Once her death becomes increasingly inevitable, far too much maudlin sentimentality creeps in, making it a somewhat unbelievable and dissatisfying experience.