20 years of ‘My life without me’, the film by Isabel Coixet that marked her filmography

‘My life without me’ was one of the films that most marked my adolescence and my film education. Twenty years ago now, Isabel Coixet premiered her fourth feature film at the Berlin International Film Festival, this intimate and heartbreaking film, although not without hope, which gave her the definitive push to become one of the most important Spanish filmmakers, but also a relevant name internationally. The applause she received at the Berlinale was well deserved; The work (which has its place among the 101 best Spanish films in the history of cinema) fit perfectly with the sensibility of independent cinema of the moment and would concentrate the keys of past and future cinematography of the Catalan director: emotion, women with conflicts powerful and plastic exquisiteness.

Doing the exercise of seeing ‘My life without me’ again today, I verify that it has not lost its validity. While the me of today more easily and remotely identifies the strings that the film uses to strike our sensitive chords (and I understand why it touched me so much at a younger and more turbulent age), only a cynic could qualify as kitschy or emotional pornography. , not even in the famous farewell tapes, the story he tells. It is what emotions have, which, if well told, can be imperishable. On paper, the idea of ​​a person making a list of things to do before dying may sound hackneyed (not so much twenty years ago), but the important thing here is not so much the originality of the story but its delicate execution.

Death, and the fear of it, is undoubtedly one of the great universal themes of literature, poetry, cinema, dance or any other form of artistic expression. Its inescapable nature and the abyss of uncertainty that the prospect of our non-existence supposes plagues us all, to a greater or lesser degree, throughout our lives. If it is difficult to live without love, it is impossible to live without dying. AND It is to the torment of these fears that ‘My life without me’ makes us face through Ann’s story, that 23-year-old girl who never had a full life (teenage mother, lower class, who has only known one boy…) and who crashes against the wall of time; she only has a couple of months to live. So what?

For her story, Isabel Coixet was based on a short story, ‘Pretending the Bed is a Raft’, in which the protagonist also discovered that she was going to die. But unlike what happens in her film, this girl did not hide what was happening to her relatives. Instead, Ann prefers to keep it quiet to save others suffering (she verbalizes it on the tape that she dedicates to Don, her husband), but also to enjoy her last days without condescending looks and being able to make her own decisions.

One of these is falling in love with another man, something that broke the moral compass of many viewers who did not forgive infidelity even to a woman with a terminal illness. but that is the best gift that Ann gives herself, avoid the moral judgment of others and treat herself to live intensely a last love, which somehow represents everything that he could not and will not feel due to the circumstances of his youth and because everything ends. The ending has something of a story. Because as Ann says goodbye from the bed of her trailer, before the fade to white, he fancies what her life will be like without her. Maybe Don won’t fall for the other Ann, her mom won’t listen to him about dating, or Lee may never paint the walls, but she won’t be here to see him.

The gray and cloudy skies of Vancouver, the acting talent of Sarah Polley (now turned into the notable director of ‘They Talk’, nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture this year) who makes us feel without going overly melodramatic, the hardness of the face of Deborah Harry (surprising, and magnificent casting choice), the return to the laundry after ‘Things I Never Told You’, the brief touches of humor and the contrast with the banality, the melancholy of a young Mark Ruffalo and an endless number of frames that are in themselves a sample of art and talent, make up the soul of a film that, very accurately, Mirito Torreiro (who was in charge of the review of ‘My life without me’ in FOTOGRAMAS at that time) described as “a bitter pill that hurries between vivifying tears, the testimony of most impressive love of life that this seasoned chronicler has seen in many years”. And how not to review the music of Alfonso Vilallonga, as well as musical choices such as ‘Senza fine’ by Gino Paoli, ‘God only knows’ by the Beach Boys or ‘Humans like you’ by Chop Suey that won the Goya.

I remember not only reading texts as passionate as Mirito’s at that time. Coixet faced criticism for filming in English or for doing it in Canada, something now unthinkable, or it was even said that she was more concerned with composing the shot than anything else. Of course, she didn’t have to apologize for having an open horizon or an immense talent for creating beautiful images, but it was not fair to say that ‘My life without me’ or ‘The secret life of words’ were purely aesthetic filmsbecause what stands out in them are the emotions.

As also in the misunderstood ‘Nobody wants the night’, a brilliant work, or in ‘La librería’ which was a commercial success; Both, like other Catalan films, have a lot of ‘My life without me’ even though they are nothing alike. None of them would exist without this film that we are celebrating today, nor would Coixet’s path have been the same without stopping at that caravan in a back garden covered in dark clouds.