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.
As of April 2009, Blu-rays and DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TH-37PX80B
37" Plasma TV with a Sony BDP-1500 Blu-ray player and played through a Yamaha DSP-AX820 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Jan 2011: Intel Quad Core Dell XPS 8100, i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80Ghz, 8Gb RAM, nVidia GeForce GTS 240, Windows 7
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
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.
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.