Death Be Not Loud

End times: Sarah Polley contemplates death.

Sarah Polley faces death quietly in My Life Without Me.

by Cindy Fuchs

Ann (Sarah Polley) is 23 years old. She lives in a trailer in British Columbia with her husband, Don (Scott Speedman), and their two young daughters, and works nights as a university janitor. She gossips with fragile best friend Laurie (Amanda Plummer) and argues with her angry mom (Deborah Harry), who tells the girls stories based on Joan Crawford movie plots (particularly Mildred Pierce, about the greedy and ungrateful daughter). Though Ann’s life is difficult, she remains serene and admirably generous, at once pale and steely.

Her delicate balance suffers a jolt in the first few minutes of Isabel Coixet's My Life Without Me, when she faints and, following an endless afternoon's worth of tests at the hospital, learns that she has terminal ovarian cancer. Here again, Ann shows remarkable resolve, comforting the anguished doctor (Julian Richings) who must tell her the bad news. With only months to live, she decides not to tell anyone, to prepare herself by prearranging details of her family's life following her death.

Usually, when a girl is dying in a movie, viewers are invited to empathize with the courageous victim-to-be, mourn her imminent passing and sympathize with her distraught relatives (think Terms of Endearment or worse, Love Story). In Coixet's version, inspired by a short story by Nanci Kincaid and executive produced by Pedro Almodívar, the manipulation is less sentimental. Here, the ignorant relatives and friends are not upset and Ann's decision not to tell seems simultaneously selfless and selfish. She makes a list of things to do before she dies, then she spends the rest of the film ticking off items: cassette tapes for her two daughters' birthdays, a visit to her incarcerated father (Alfred Molina), taking a lover (Mark Ruffalo).

Ann's lack of self-pity might be off-putting, but by making its heroine a bit gnarly, distancing you even as you learn more about her, My Life Without Me thematizes the problem of identifying with characters. The most direct route to this theme is Ann's voiceover, deliberate, sensual and in the second person. She begins the film standing alone in the night, her pale face turned up to the rain that soaks her, as her voiceover details the experience: "This is you. You never thought you'd be doing something like this. You kind of like it being like this, fighting the cold and feeling the water seep into your shirt." At this point, you're unaware of the devastating news to come, but already, you're imagining what it's like to be the "you" of her monologue.

It's a device, certainly, at times more convincing than others. But Polley's subtle, smart performance supports it in ways you might not anticipate. Even more striking are the rare ruptures in this narrative surface, as when Ann confronts a hospital nurse who is less than helpful on that first day. Worried that her children don't know where she is, Ann asks, "Do you know what it's like to be waiting at school?" In fact, the nurse does know, and for scant seconds, the film transports you into her memory of being left at school as a child. It's a tiny moment, but it's what the film is about -- being in touch enough with your own life so that you can understand someone else's.

My Life Without Me

Written and directed by Isabel Coixet A Sony Classics release Opens Friday at Ritz Five

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