Ann (Sarah Polley) is a hard working mother with two young daughters, a husband, Don (Scott Speedman), who spends more time unemployed than working, a mother (Deborah Harry) with a history of broken dreams and a father who has spent the last ten years in jail. While other women her age are out partying, she spends her nights working as a janitor in a university she could never afford to go to in the daytime. She lives with her family in a tiny trailer in her mother's backyard. Somehow, she keeps her head above water: surviving but not "living".
After collapsing one day, she goes in for a medical check-up, where a shy doctor tells her some shocking news. She tells no one, determined to shield her daughters from the truth and at the same time to take control of her life and to make the most out of it. To Don, her eccentric co-worker Laurie, her mother and her kids, Ann chalks her weak pallor up to a case of anaemia. In private, Ann makes a list of things she had always wanted to accomplish in her life but never had the time. They range from the mundane to the sublime-from changing her hairstyle and getting fake nails to finding and making love with another man.
Suddenly, Ann's life opens up, and the life force that was nascent in this 23-year-old, working-class woman blooms into a quiet yet steely determination.
Burdened with her secret but liberated by her new sense of control, Ann's emotional journey leads her to unexpected places and gives her life new meaning: the tender moments, the volatile emotions she must keep inside, the recognition that she has the power to understand, examine and fully live her own life.
Special Agent Matti
Take your Prozac before watching My life without me. It has all the pace and introspection of The Station Agent but none of the joie de vivre. It's a good film but gee, it's unpleasant. Be thankful that you're not white trash (this is not the kind of film that white trash will watch).
M (Low level coarse language, mature themes)
106 minutes (1:46 hours)
Film: 15 July 2004
