In 2003, Sarah Polley starred in Isabel Coixet’s wonderful My Life Without Me as a young wife and mother who discovers that she has terminal uterine cancer – and only two months to live. Keeping the news from her loved ones, Polley’s Ann assembles a list of things to do before she dies – things like making tapes for her young daughters to listen to on their birthdays, finding a new wife for her beloved husband, and having a sexual relationship with another man. The driving force behind Ann’s decision to (eventually) embark on a passionate affair with no less than Mark Ruffalo (who can blame her) is Ann’s imminent demise and her desire to fill her last days with rich experiences. It’s one of her best performances as an actress, and it’s perhaps one of the best ways to approach Polley’s second directorial debut. In Polley’s Take This Waltz, Michelle Williams‘ Margot suffers in a way not wholly different than how Ann suffered in My Life. But Margot’s particular death sentence is of the Hamlet variety – she’s not sick and she’s not obviously falling apart, but Margot is decomposing of her own volition, dying since the day she was born, and both unable and unwilling to notice her blooming unhappiness. In short terms, Margot is bored and doesn’t realize it.