A fragile, tender entry in the weepie genre, My Life Without Me burrows under the skin and goes straight for the tear ducts. Its unsentimentally-played story concerns a young wife and mother who discovers she's only got a few weeks left to live.

"CONVINCINGLY MOVING"

It's not exactly the most uplifting tale, but this intelligently pitched emotional melodrama avoids every pitfall of the few-weeks-to-live theme. It also justifies its unusually high pedigree (Pedro and Agustín Almodovar are executive producers) with some convincingly moving moments.

At just 23-years-old, Ann (Sarah Polley) has barely lived her life. Knocked up with her first child at the age of 17, saddled with a loving but unambitious husband (Scott Speedman), and blessed with two adorable little daughters, she's a working class mom working a dead end cleaning job while desperately hoping she won't end up like her own lonely mother (Deborah Harry). Then comes the pain: a trip to the hospital and the news that she's terminally ill.

Cleverly setting up the story so that Ann decides not to tell anyone about her illness, Spanish writer-director Isabel Coixet (Things I Never Told You) effortlessly avoids effusive gushing, homing in instead on this woman's attempts to put her house (well, trailer) in order.

As Ann draws up a touchingly unambitious list of "Things To Do Before I Die" and unexpectedly falls in love with a bookish stranger (Mark Ruffalo) she meets in her local Laundromat, My Life Without Me plays a dangerous game of brinkmanship with the usual weepie clichés - but emerges all the stronger for it.

"DIGNIFIED AND HEARTFELT"

Veering off at unexpected tangents - including a hilarious discussion about Milli Vanilli, and a convenience store fantasy sequence where staff and shoppers dance through the aisles, blithely proving Ann's assertion that nobody ever thinks of death in a supermarket - Coixet's dignified, heartfelt little indie drama proves that dying young doesn't always come with the schmaltz of a Julia Roberts movie. Outstanding.