- 9 years ago
- There are many different ways that people diagnosed with a terminal illness cope with the devastating situation. For filmmaker Alex Sichel, best known for 1997's All Over Me, the obvious response was to create a film about it. A Woman Like Me, directed by Sichel and Elizabeth Giamatti, is a hybrid documentary that includes scenes of Alex’s illness and exploration of various treatments, along with a fictional narrative that parallels her own story. This latter film-within-a-film stars a luminous Lili Taylor as a New York-based filmmaker named Anna who is also dealing with breast cancer, but whose upbeat attitude and positive outcome contrasts with Alex’s experience. A compelling composite, A Woman Like Me is an honest, moving portrayal of a vibrant personality managing a terrible health crisis with creativity, humor and grit. Early in the film Alex tells us that making a movie “is my way of understanding what’s going on.” While she sometimes wonders if the stress of filmmaking is the best way to use her time (her mother is strongly against it), it’s clear that she has to do this. The goal for Alex, who identifies as Buddhist, is to face death without fear; making A Woman Like Me is part of her process to achieve that, while also holding on to some hope. A Woman Like Me, unlike other “meta” films with complicated storylines, is fairly simple and chronological: We see Alex working on character development with the cast of her fictional movie in between visits to tradi[...]
