ok, when i picked "my life without me" i did so without expecting too much from it and mainly because its director, isabel coixet, had also filmed "elegy" (starring ben kingsley and penelope cruz), a personal favourite.

from what i could gather online before checking it out -- "my life without me" seemed the very typical "few-weeks-lefts-to-live" tale...with the main character who discovers he /she is about to die and hence wants to live fully every single moment left.

what i can say now, after actually watching it - is that, yes, the theme of the movie is a recurrent one -- yet isabel coixet does develop it in the most moving and realistic way, with gentle touches and great characters...adding here and there an eerie sense of poetry and romance that had tears streaming down my face. plus... crucially: the cast for the film is outstanding; the screenplay is beautifully written - with dialogues that always appear very natural; and the soundtrack is impressive by all means.

"my life without me" tells the story of anne, a 23 year old woman who lives in a trailer parked in her mother's backyard with her two daughters and her husband don, her high school sweetheart. anne works as a janitor during the night and left school at 17, when she had her first child. not exactly american dream material, so to speak... although, significantly - anne does talk quite a bit about "dreams" - maybe as she had to give up all of hers. after finding out she is terminally ill (and deciding the news will be kept secret) -- she makes a list of things she intends to do before the end of her life...like: "sleeping with another man just to see what it is like" - "smoking and drinking as much as i want" - "doing something with my hair...and getting fake nails" - "making someone fall in love with me" - (etc)... the way she comes up with these entries and the way she tries to make them happen is both convincingly realistic and unworldly, magically touching.

the result is a fragile journey in which anne finds love in its purest form, sharing a moving romance with bookish lee (played by mark ruffalo). along the way, there are countless tender moments... like the fantasy sequence where, in a busy supermarket where anne's voice ponders about death, staff and shoppers start waltzing through the aisles to the music of "senza fine" by gino paoli. surreal but mesmerising.

"my life without me" goes well beyond not being a predictable "weepie": it is a beautiful tale about love, hope and (oddly enough) happiness - a gripping story leaving you with an amost magical sense of awe.

i must also add - i found the choice of "senza fine" - used both for anne's first kiss to lee and the already mentioned daydreaming at the supermarket - absolutely heartbreaking. perfect - intensely moving, romantic, unforgettable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyGlkWsn-OY