For Isabel Coixet, it shouldn't take the influence of a film to teach you to seize every day of your life.
"You realize life is short and you have to say the things you want to say or do the things you want to do now and not tomorrow because you never know what will happen," Coixet said. "I think [Ann- the protagonist of Coixet's new film] discovers all those things when she finds out she's going to die. Everything becomes new for her, the rain, the taste of ginger candy and the ice cream... she's discovering things we take for granted."
"My Life Without Me," Coixet's poetically beautiful attempt to portray the impact of death on human life, is intended as a blow to those of us who ignore the finer points of life and the fact that life is, indeed, short.
Coixet explained the main differences between her and the inexperienced, 23-year-old protagonist of "My Life Without Me."
"It's different because if you know you're going to die when you're 23... it's different for me, I have traveled, I have lived, I have had lovers," Coixet said.
Ann grasps hold of her life in its final months by doing all the things she has never done. Many of these things are similar for Coixet, while others are drastically different.
"The first thing I would think would be for my kid, because I have a six year old daughter... that would be my main concern," Coixet said, agreeing with one of Ann's primary concerns in the film. "I would say everything I want to say about the world and politics and how I think we can change some things. I would say exactly what I think every second."
"My Life Without Me" is Coixet's fourth film and her first film in English. She adapted the screenplay for this film from a story by Nanci Kincaid entitled "Pretending the Bed is a Raft." Coixet elaborated on one of the very major changes she made to the original story.
"I think the main thing is in the story when she knows she's going to die she tells everybody and I felt it would be much more interesting for the film if she doesn't tell anyone," Coixet explained.
Not only did Coixet write and direct the film, but she also operated the camera.
"I'm the camera operator on my films too, so 80 percent of the film's handheld," Coixet said. "For me it's way to create a continuity with the actors, with the characters, and it's a way to be with them."
Casting and establishing a strong connection with her actors, and thus characters, is a key element to filmmaker for Coixet. "I was very concerned about finding Ann," Coixet said. "I needed someone who was very young, but had some baggage and Sarah's just an amazing actress. She never does much, it's bare, but she has this kind of inner light."
The casting of Deborah Harry of Blondie fame was also a careful choice.
"Let's say it was not the most obvious choice [to cast Deborah Harry]," Coixet explained. "I remember Pedro [Almadovar- one of the producers] was very upset because 'maybe she's too well-known.' But she did this amazing reading. I think she's a very good actress...her fame as a singer, I think that's maybe obscuring her acting skills."
Ann and her family are very poor in the film and Coixet's portrayal of poverty is remarkable different from that in other films
"I come from a very poor family, and people are not complaining all the time [like they do in some films]," Coixet stated. "I just want to say [with this film] that even if poor people are not educated, they are still smart and intelligent in a natural way."
She does not find Ann and her husband's poverty to be all that terrible that defines them, but rather something they deal with.
"They have a trailer, that's something," Coixet said. "They try to make the most of it."
After four dramas, something new may be up next for Coixet.
"I want to make a comedy because enough tears," she explained. "I want to make a comedy with the same actors of this film because working with them was just wonderful"
