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Dom Robinson reviews
Metrodome Distribution
- Cert:
- Cat.no: MTD 5142
- Running time: 101 minutes
- Year: 2003
- Pressing: 2004
- Region(s): 2, PAL
- Chapters: 12 plus extras
- Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
- Languages: English
- Subtitles: English
- Widescreen: 1.85:1
- 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: No
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £19.99
- Extras: Behind the Scenes, Cast and Crew, Q&A with Isabel Coixet, Trailers, Music Video
Director:
- Isabel Coixet
(Hay motivo, A los que aman, My Life Without Me)
Producers:
- Esther Garcia and Gordon McLennan
Screenplay:
- Isabel Coixet
(based on the book, “Pretending the Bed is a Raft” by Nancy Kincaid)
Music:
- Alfonso Vilallonga and Gino Paoli
Cast:
- Ann: Sarah Polley
Laurie: Amanda Plummer
Don: Scott Speedman
Ann’s Mother: Deborah Harry
Ann: Leonor Watling
The Hairdresser: Maria de Medeiros
Lee: Mark Ruffalo
Dr Thompson: Julian Richings
Ann’s Father: Alfred Molina (uncredited)
In My Life Without Me, Sarah Polley (right) plays Ann, a 23-year-old mother of two daughters, who lives in a trailer park with her husband Don (Scott Speedman), and while they want better for themselves, for the time being she’s stuck in a dead-end overnight cleaning job, but he’s starting to make a career out of building swimming pools.
So, while there are some slight prospects on the horizon, you think there’s no way things can theoretically get worse? Wrong. After collapsing at home, she goes for a check-up at the hospital and is told, at this tender young age, that she has cancer, it has spread considerably and that she has less than three months to live, as well as the fact the tumours she has are inoperable because she’s so young.
She regrets that she’s lived such a straight-laced life – no drugs, no alcohol, having two children by the one man and never making love to anyone else. And so, starts writing a list of things to do before she dies so as to leave no stone unturned, including seeing her father in jail, sleeping with another man to see what it’s like, drinking and smoking with abandon, and making someone else fall in love with her.
Of course, telling her family about her predicament might be a good place to start, but whether she does and in what way she might do that is something you’ll have to discover for yourself since this is a movie where not a lot happens other than life just playing out in its own time.
Sarah Polley puts in quite a convincing performance as the girl afflicted with the disease, except that as the film isn’t quite the draw I thought it would be from all the clips I saw originally last year on BBC News 24’s Talking Movies – a great programme to catch info on new films before they even get a sniff of a UK release, it does take a while to warm to the situation.
The rest of the cast all put in a good turn to keep the film ticking along until its eventual conclusion, with pop star Debbie Harry appearing as Ann’s depressed mother, Amanda Plummer, who seems to have been absent from mainstream films for such a long time, as Ann’s kooky colleague Laurie (yes, Ms. Plummer always plays the kooky character), bright-eyed Spanish stunner Leonor Watling is Ann’s new next-door neighbour, also called Ann, and it’s rare that any film has two characters with the same name, let alone one with such a small cast.
The hairdresser (Maria de Medeiros, who played Fabienne in Pulp Fiction is a massive Milli Vanilli fan, and there’s a brief, but touching, performance put in by an uncredited Alfred Molina, as Ann’s father, obviously a world away from his bad-guy turn in the Spider-Man sequel during the summer of 2004.
Similar to, but not quite, like Lost in Translation, you don’t think it’s going to pull you in, but it does by the time you get to the end. However, while at that point where you’ve witnessed the conclusion and everything fits into place, it still doesn’t feel like it’s been as engaging as a watch as I thought it would’ve been, partly because some of the things she plans to do, while happening by chance, do seem to be happening rather too quickly.
That said, My Life Without Me, the first English-language feature from director Isabel Coixet, is certainly worth a look.
The film is framed at 1.85:1 widescreen and is anammorphic with no problems whatsoever, making great use of whole 16:9 anamorphic frame portraying well the dull and uninviting appearance of the hospital, the same for the environment being cleaned fruitlessly by Sarah Polley, I say that only because she’d be cleaning the same places day in day out only to get dirty again, and the inescapable look of the trailer park.
For the kind of drama this is, the DD5.1 soundtrack only comes to life really for some narration and songs, particularly the one that features over the main menu, the haunting Sometime Later by Alpha.
The extras on this DVD are listed below.
- Behind the Scenes (8 mins): Generally a mixture of interview snippets from director Isabel Coixet and all the main cast, combined with film clips and on-set footage. Don’t watch this before you see the film as it’ll spoil certain aspects that you’re meant to find out through watching it. The interview parts, like the film footage, is in letterboxed 16:9.
- Cast and crew (40 mins): More snippets of interviews with the cast in letterbox 16:9, as well as their filmographies, plus a 4:3-filmed interview with the director who gets the lion’s share of the time with 25 mins.
- Q&A with Isabel Coixet (11 mins): After the film was shown at a cinema in Soho, London, questions are put to the director in front of the audience. This segment is strangely filmed in a 2.35:1 anamorphic ratio, but you can only see this properly, given the style of it, by selecting the option on your widescreen TV that’s either called “Just” or “Super Wide” or whatever your TV calls the option that sits between a usual 16:9 anamorphic image and 4:3.
- Trailers (3 mins): Both in letterbox 16:9, one in English (2 mins) and a dialogue-free one for the Spanish market (1 min).
- Music video (4½ mins): I wasn’t actually sure which track this was as it wasn’t titled, and wasn’t the one I would’ve liked to see (the track by Alpha).
- More from Metrodome: Extra trailers for Last Party 2000, Spellbound, Amandla, Valentin and Northfork.
I’ve mentioned that the Alpha track appears over the main menu, and it does this while being accompanied by clips from the film. Subtitles are available in English and there’s only a mere 12 chapters which isn’t really enough for a film thesedays.
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
OVERALL 
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.