The Guitar

How would you behave if you had to confront your own mortality? Especially if you were young, in your twenties or early thirties, how would you react if you learned you had less than two months to live? These questions create the point of departure for Amy Redford's whimsical fairytale The Guitar, a thoroughly engaging almost mythological allegory that is fueled by the exceptional performance of Saffron Burrows and executed with style by its director.

One morning Mel, a mousy, harried New Yorker with a thankless job and an even-less-appealing boyfriend learns that the tumor in her throat is cancerous; the diagnosis is terminal, so it seems that both her job and her relationship are kaput. Rather than lying down and dying then and there, she embarks on an endless spree, the kind of self-indulgent wish fulfillment that we have all fantasized about.