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| Wild praise accompanies star Sarah Polley doused by rain on this poster for Isabel Coixet's My Life Without Me |
A 23 year-old cleaning lady and mother of two daughters gets an unexpected notice that she has metastatic ovarian cancer that will cause her death soon. She neglects to tell anyone about her situation, while she secretly gathers some last experiences in her still young life.
My Life Without Me is written and directed by Isabel Coixet (Demasiado Viejo para Morir Joven (1989)), based on the short story collection Pretending the Bed Is a Raft (1997) by Nanci Kincaid (Eat, Drink, and Be from Mississippi (2009)).
The film may be a hit for depressed, younger women, who look for a story to weep over, but for me My Life Without Me's humdrum pace and very female-centric plot wsa too distant and still for me to become immersed. Activities observed include doing laundry, washing and combing hair, cleaning, doing laundry (again), tending children, worrying, - and a romance which seems designed to make the tragedy even sadder.
One can't rob My Life Without Me of a certain poetic force as well as a fine cast, (which among others reunites two of the peripheral stars of Pulp Fiction (1994), Amanda Plummer (Ken Park (2002)) and Maria de Medeiros (Mar (2018)), though without giving them a scene together here either), - but this pasty downer wasn't my cup of misery tea.
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2003 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
Cost: 2.5 mil. $
Box office: 9.7 mil. $ - 12.2 mil. $ (different reports)
= Big hit (returned 4.40 times its cost)
[My Life Without Me premiered 10 February (Berlin International Film Festival) and runs 106 minutes. No less than 15 companies and governmental support bodies were involved in financing and making the film. Shooting took place in British Colombia, including Vancouver. The film opened #60 to a 40k $ first weekend in 7 theaters in North America, where it peaked at #53 and in 39 theaters (different weeks), grossing 0.4 mil. $ (4.1 % of the total gross, - betting on the 9.7 mil. $ gross listed at Box Office Mojo.) The film's 3 biggest markets were Japan with 5.3 mil. $ (54.6 %), Spain with 2.4 mil. $ (24.7 %) and North America. The film won a prize in Berlin, was nominated for 2 European Film awards, won 2/5 Goya award nominations, among other honors. Roger Ebert gave the film a 2.5/4 star review, translating to a notch higher than this one. Coixet returned with 3 other projects (a documentary, a segment and a video) before her theatrical return with The Secret Life of Words (2005). Sarah Polley (Trigger (2010)) returned in Dermott's Quest (2003, short) and theatrically in Luck (2003). My Life Without Me is fresh at 65 % with a 6.30/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of My Life Without Me?
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