My Life Without Me

Film Info

Spain 2003 | 106 min. Director: Isabel Coixet

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My Life Without Me

Synopsis

Ann is twenty three, she's got two young daughters, a husband who spends more time unemployed than working, a mother who hates the world, a father who has spent the last ten years in jail, a job as a night janitor in a university she could never attend to in the daytime. She lives in a trailer on the yard of her mother's house, on the outskirts of Vancouver.

This grey existence changes completely after a medical check-up. Paradoxically, since that day Ann discovers the appetite for life.

Cast & Crew

Director

Isabel Coixet
Producer

Esther García, Gordon McLennan
Screenwriter

Isabel Coixet
Director of photography

Jean-Claude Larrieu
Main Cast

Sarah Polley (Ann), Scott Speedman (Don), Mark Ruffalo (Lee), Leonor Watling (neighbour Ann)
Editor (Cut)

Lisa Jane Robison
Original Score

Alfonso de Vilallonga
Production Design

Carol Lavalle
Costume Design

Katia Sano

Director's comment

The worst thing about making a film is talking about it. Or writing about it.
And it's even worse talking about oneself in relation to the film.
Why this film and not another one? Why this character? Why this melancholy? This dark hope, so muck rain?
When I started to write the script I still had some certainty. Now, when the film is finished, almost three
years later, I feel stripped of any, swimming in the dark
once again, knowing that the cord which attached me to the film has been broken and that now, when it's slipping away
from me, all I would like to do is to start it again, to live again with the idea of the film and not with its - for me - strange, unreal reality.
I look at the five cans which hold the first print of the film. I think of the tears, of the answered prayers. I think of Ann, Laurie, Lee, Don, the hairdresser, the neighbour,
the little I think of all the people who have made
this film what it is. I think of the people who will love the film. I think of the people who won't.
The worst thing about making films is the feeling of emptiness when they're finished.
The emptiness after this film is very, very great.

Isabel Coixet. January, 2003.

Biography

Isabel Coixet has a degree in History, specialised in contemporary. She has written and directed - in addition to "My Life Without Me" - the feature films: "Too Old To Die Young" (1986), the internationally acclaimed "Things I Never Told You" (1995) and "Those Who Love" (1998). She has been creative director of JWT agency, founder and creative director of TARGET agency and of the production company EDDIE SAETA, which has received the most prestigious awards for its Spots. In 2000, she founded MISS WASABI FILMS, which has also produced outstanding video clips and documentaries.