- A young woman conceals the fact of her terminal cancer to live her life with a passion she never had before.
- Ann, 23 years old, lives a modest life with her two kids and her husband in a trailer in her mother's garden. Her life takes a dramatic turn, when her doctor tells her that she has uterine cancer and only two months to live. She compiles a list of things to do before she dies.—Moritz Muehlenhoff <jmm@inutil.org>
- Sarah Polley plays Ann, a 24-year-old mother of two. Ann is married to Don (Scott Speedman), and they live near Ann's mother (Deborah Harry), who is bitter about the fact that Ann's father is serving a ten-year prison sentence. Ann learns that she has only a few months to live. She makes a series of goals to complete before her time on Earth comes to an end. Among her accomplishments are taking a lover (Mark Ruffalo), finding someone to care for Don, and recording birthday greetings for her two daughters..
- Young Ann has a simple, but happy life with her husband, Don, and her two daughters, Penny and Patsy. Ann works as a janitor in the night-shift, cleaning at a University, Don builds swimming pools and they live in a trailer in Ann's mother's backyard. When Ann goes to the doctor expecting to be pregnant, she is informed that indeed she has a terminal cancer. She hides the information from her family and prepares for her death, making a list of ten outstanding subjects in her life, including preparing tapes for the birthdays of her daughters until they are eighteen years old; eating and drinking whatever she wants; telling only the truth; finding a new wife for her husband; visiting her father in the penitentiary; and making love with another man.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- Twenty-three year old Ann has just been diagnosed with a terminal case of cancer, she having very little time left to live. She decides not to tell her family of the diagnosis, her family consisting of: Don, her loving husband and the only man she's ever been with and kissed; Penny and Patsy, her two young children; her angry mother, in whose backyard in a trailer Ann, Don and the kids live; and her incarcerated father, who she has not seen in a number of years. Because of the diagnosis, Ann compiles a list of things to do which is primarily to ensure that Don and the kids are taken care of after her passing. But the list also includes indulgent things for herself to make her collective life as complete as possible. Beyond her physician Dr. Thompson, Ann finds others she hopes will be a part of enacting her 'to do' list (without telling each of her impending death). These other people include Lee, a man she meets in a local café, and her new next door neighbor also named Ann.—Huggo
- Ann (Sarah Polley), 23 years old (approaching her 24th birthday), is a young janitor living in rural British Columbia, Canada, with her husband, Don (Scott Speedman), and their two young daughters, Penny (Jessica Amlee) and Patsy (Kenya Jo Kennedy). Ann was once a promising student, but after a troubled time in high school, Ann found herself pregnant by Don at a Nirvana concert; luckily, Don is a kind man and a caring father, who supports Ann and the girls by building swimming pools for a living, his one vice having a few beers every now and again. Ann and Don are also lucky that Ann's mother (Debbie Harry), a caterer, allows them to live in an old camper on the property, which has been converted into a modest yet comfortable mini-home.
Despite being relatively secure, Ann longs for the more intellectually stimulating life she may have had if she hadn't been a teen mother, dreaming of attending university rather than cleaning one during her night shift as a career. She spends much of her work shifts listening to foreign language lesson tapes on her Walkman, although she does have one friend at work whom she frequently chats with, Laurie (Amanda Plummer), a fellow janitor who obsesses with diets and dieting, believing herself to be old and fat. Despite the dismal prospects Ann faces of spending the remainder of her life as a trailer park wife and mother, she never complains, and is seen to be quite cheerful at home, accepting of her situation is not entirely pleased by it.
One morning, after promising to pick up Penny and Patsy after school, Ann becomes ill and falls unconscious in the mini-home, discovered by her mother, who happens to be out doing the laundry when the incident occurs. Ann has to spend the day at the hospital, worrying about being unable to pick up the girls. She's surprised when her shy doctor, Dr. Thompson (Julian Richings), avoids any of her medical questions with trivial gossip, and becomes worried when he meets her directly in the waiting room without looking her in the eye. He urges her to wait for Don, but Ann convinces him to tell her what her diagnosis is first. Dr. Thompson reveals to her that she has cancer in multiple organs throughout her body, and that it cannot be treated because it has progressed too quickly. Ann isn't sure what to think, and makes a few jokes about it. Finally, it dawns on her that Dr. Thompson is trying to tell her that she's dying, when he says to her that she has maybe three months at best before it happens. Dr. Thompson admits that he can't look Ann in the eye directly to tell her that she's going to die, and that the nurses find this unprofessional of him. Ann takes a liking to him, and when he offers her a coffee (or bourbon, he jokes), she asks him for a piece of candy instead, as she begins to cry about her impending death. Dr. Thompson gives her the last piece of ginger candy he has, and offers that he'll bring her some more the next time she comes to see him.
Ann leaves the hospital in a daze; Dr. Thompson's bourbon joke has her recalling memories of her deadbeat father, who has sent to prison when she was a little girl. She decides that she isn't going to tell anyone about her dying, feigning normalcy at home. She lies and tells her mother and Don that she fainted because of anemia, and that she'll be alright. Still, knowing that she only has a short time left to live, Ann finds herself often wandering off in her own mind, finding that much of what she used to want for herself is meaningless. Don suggests that they'll take Penny and Patsy up to Whalebay Beach next month, because Patsy has never seen the beach before and wants to go. This sparks Ann to write a bucket list of things she wants to do before she dies while she goes to an old-fashioned diner for coffee one night. Her list includes going to Whalebay Beach, and also includes "sleeping with other men to see what it's like", "getting a new wife for Don" and "visiting her father in prison". She adds as well that she wants to say whatever she's thinking on her mind. After placing an order for coffee and pineapple cheesecake, Ann rudely tells the aging waitress (Deanne Henry) that her dream of using lottery winnings to get plastic surgery to look exactly like the singer Cher is a stupid idea. Unbeknownst to Ann, a man in the background overhears the conversation and laughs, finding it funny.
Ann stops attending her janitor job as regularly as she should be, instead doing things that she either had no money or no time to do before finding out she was going to die. She goes to a beauty salon, hoping to get her hair dyed blonde and fake nails done, but the unnamed salon owner (Maria de Medeiros) repeatedly tries pushing her to get long braids done, as the salon owner herself has braided hair. At a bar, Ann runs into the salon owner again, who apologizes for the braids thing, explaining that her hairdresser's job is often very stressful. They discuss the salon owner's favorite band, Milli Vanilli, but the salon owner goes to dance with a friend before Ann can really have much of a conversation with her. Ann goes to do her laundry at the Ticky Poo Laundromat, where the man observing her at the old-fashioned diner is also doing his laundry. He offers to buy her a coffee, and she initially refuses, but then changes her mind. By the time he brings the coffees back, Ann has fallen asleep on the bench near the washing machines. The man stays with her all night, giving her his jacket as a blanket. When she wakes up, she informs him that she has to go back home. The man introduces himself as Lee (Mark Ruffalo) and offers her the jacket to keep, as well as a classic book. Ann finds his home telephone number inside the book.
At home, Ann's life is becoming more complicated. Returning to work, she vomits in the bathroom sink, and randomly blurts out to Laurie every terrible thing that's happened in her life, including school bullying, her father's imprisonment, and her daughters' innocent belief in the happy TV commercials that pervade their lives every day. Laurie believes that Ann is on an extreme diet. Ann is only angered further when she comes home to find that her mother, who is supposed to be babysitting Penny and Patsy, is telling the girls a synopsis of a Joan Crawford film that she religiously watches, alluding to all the sacrifices she had to make herself by having Ann and losing all her dreams. Ann later snaps at Penny for mocking Patsy over complaining about having her hair brushed. With no outlet to tell her family the truth about her impending death, Ann decides to record cassette tapes for each of the girls' birthdays until they both turn eighteen years old, one for each birthday - by the last cassette tape, Patsy's eighteenth birthday, Ann has to get out of her car and cry. She isn't sure who to give the tapes to, least of all Don.
She gets the nerve to call Lee by payphone on a rainy night, and despite the late hour, he lets her in. Ann is surprised to find an absence of furniture or refreshments in Lee's apartment, and it's revealed that his wife took all the furniture after a messy divorce. Ann is even more surprised to discover that Lee is a well-educated land surveyor, who's done work all throughout Canada and the United States, mostly to help with bridge construction. Lee collects books, and is more up-to-speed with Ann intellectually. The two begin a passionate affair while kissing in Lee's car in the rain, and Ann neglects to tell Lee about her death. Ann decides to return to the hospital, not for medical care (she's been completely skipping any of her appointments), but to ask Dr. Thompson to do her a favor. She is surprised that Dr. Thompson has decided to look her in the eye this time when he couldn't before, but she insists that she wants no further medical care, telling him that she doesn't want her daughters to have their last memory of her be in a hospital ward. She asks him if he'll give each of the cassette tapes she's made for her daughters to them on each of their birthdays, explaining that Don might lose them or wouldn't give the tapes to the girls in the way she intended. Dr. Thompson agrees, in exchange for Ann agreeing to accept a prescription for painkillers. He also gives her an entire paper bag full of ginger candies.
Ann and Lee continue their affair, having to meet in secret places to keep it going. Ann is slightly ambivalent about it after Don tells her one night how regretful he is for not being able to give her or the girls a better life, but she continues meeting Lee. Sex is implied to have occurred as they both sit on the floor of Lee's apartment, with Ann in her underwear. Lee admits that he doesn't know her very well, and is confused after she hurls a book across the room, which features a poetic passage about a woman dying. Meanwhile, Ann sticks to her mission of trying to find a replacement wife for Don. She invites Laurie over for dinner, cooking pork ribs soaked in milk, but Don finds Laurie's accent and mannerisms to be bizarre. Laurie is embarrassed when Penny, watching her at the dinner table, remarks, "you're a PIG!" (after Laurie eats eight pork ribs before Don has even finished his first rib). A new neighbor moves into one of the mini-homes on Ann's mother's property. This new neighbor, a nurse (Leonor Watling), has the same name as Ann, and becomes a babysitter for Penny and Patsy. Ann hopes that this new 'Ann', who physically looks like Laurie, might be a better match for Don. They chat over coffee, and the neighbor tells Ann that she specializes in geriatric nursing because of a traumatic incident in which she had to watch two conjoined twin infants die in a period of thirty hours. Ann takes a liking to her, and offers her the chance to come over for dinner. The neighbor accepts.
Ann asks her mother for information on where to contact her father in prison, planning to visit him soon. Ann's mother is disappointed, but admits that it doesn't really make her angry anymore. She informs Ann that it's her birthday, and that the highlight of the day was when a young bartender brought a bowl of peanuts with a candle stuck in the top to where she was sitting, making her cry. Ann tries to explain in one of her final cassette tapes to Penny and Patsy that nothing their grandmother ever dreamed about had ever come true, and that this is why she's often so depressed. Ann drives out the next day to see her father in prison, and the two have a bittersweet reunion. She cannot bring herself to tell him of her death, but he tells her that he'll make a pair of shoes for Penny and Patsy if she sends him their shoe sizes. He also apologizes to her for his past actions, and she leaves, never seeing him again. Ann also gets her false nails that she wanted, and leaves one parting remark to the salon owner, telling her genuinely that braids look really good on her.
Ann makes a tape for her mother and for Don, apologizing to both of them, and then she drives out to a fancy diner by the waterfront to meet up with Lee one last time. It becomes clear that Lee sees their relationship as more than just a mere casual fling, and this is confirmed when he confesses his love to her. Ann admits that she feels the same way, but that they need to stop meeting, because it wouldn't be fair to Don or the girls to keep the affair going. After a tearful breakup, Lee sits in his car and cries, watching as Don arrives to pick up Ann. That night, Ann lays in bed while Don, Penny and Patsy have dinner with the neighbor next-door. Through the beaded hippie curtain that covers the doorway, Ann watches them in a blur, giving one last hope that they'll be happy before she dies alone.
Lee receives Ann's final cassette tape, which declares her love for him, also hoping that he'll meet another woman who'll be good to him. As the tape plays, various shots are seen of each of the people in Ann's life, influenced in different ways. Among them are Don, the next-door neighbor and the girls, who are finally getting to go to Whalebay Beach. They excitedly pack the car with inflatable toys. Dr. Thompson sits alone in his office, sadly holding onto the box of Ann's cassette tapes before sorting each one in order to give to Penny and Patsy. The salon owner teaches a fellow employee how to dance to Milli Vanilli. Laurie eats a carrot stick, finally sticking to her diet. The waitress from the old-fashioned diner goes through photos of Cher. Ann's mother dates a balding, middle-aged man; the two appear to be having fun together. Lee paints his walls a brighter color and aligns his book collection on his first new piece of acquired furniture, a bookshelf, as he remembers Ann fondly.
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