My Life Without Me (Isabel Coixet. 2003)

This is just a beautiful, beautiful, gorgeous piece of cinema. I know nothing about the director or the short story it is based on but it had me mesmerised throughout. The premise for the story is actually a fairly hackneyed one: young mother of two discovers she has but a few months to live and decides not to tell her family. She makes the ubiquitous 'things to do before I die' list (one of which is to sleep with Mark Ruffalo - wise move!) and in a very business like fashion, goes about the business of living. Given this all too familiar storyline, one might expect the film to be maudlin or melodramatic but it's neither of these things. In fact, the main protagonist's life doesn't change that much: she still battles on with her crushingly boring night job as a caretaker at a university, she still takes her kids to school, and she still argues with her bitter mother. In fact, none of her relationships radically alter. What does change is her relationship with her environment. What I found most intriguing about the film was its blend of realism with surrealism (that is heightened realism). The film, after all, is about someone who comes to be aware of every passing moment and sensation and this state of elevated existence is exquisitely rendered through the tactile textures picked up by the camera, the use of heightened sound and the blurring of objectivity and subjectivity. We come to empathise wholly with the central character not because she is dying but because we see the world through her eyes and, as a consequence, are reminded of the little things that really matter.