My Life Without Me Reviews

One of the year's sweetest surprises. It sneaks up on you, disarming you with its modesty and tenderness, its remarkable lack of self-infatuation.

A splendid cast, coupled with Isabel Coixet's deeply committed writing and direction, goes a long way to make this movie affecting to watch even it if doesn't hold up well to reflection once the lights go up.

Successfully surmounts nearly all the challenges of making a film about a young person dying. Which means the writer-director avoids pitfalls. It is not cloying or sentimental or falsely optimistic. It avoids bathos and exaggerated emotions. Instead, the film affirms life in surprising and gratifying ways.

I think the screenplay, written by director Isabel Coixet, is shameless in its weepy sentiment. But there is truth here, too, and a convincing portrait of working-class lives.

Ms. Polley is a naturally subtle actress, and part of her appeal lies in an unusual ability to seem at once forthright and enigmatic, but this time she comes off as a bit smug.

The film should at least be wise and three-dimensional enough to see Ann's motivations as a source of mystery as much as heroic self-empowerment. This one-dimensional ennoblement doesn't sit quite right.