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Me Without You

2002, Movie, NR, 107 mins

Me Without You: Review

ME WITHOUT YOU
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Two inseparable girls mature into young women whose close relationship endures even as their lives diverge. The film opens in suburban England, mid-1970s: Adolescent next-door neighbors Marina and Holly (Anna Popplewell, Ella Jones) are tell-each-other-everything best friends, each subconsciously envious of the other's life. Holly, an only child, is the plain one, but she's smart and grounded (if insecure); her solid Jewish parents, Judith and Max (Deborah Findlay, Allan Corduner) are conservative, stable and a little stifling. Cute, flirty Marina lives with her glamorous, high-strung mother, Linda (Trudie Styler), a stewardess turned croupier, and handsome older brother, Nat (Cameron Powie). Their father, an airline pilot, is an occasional vivid presence. Holly harbors an intense crush on the dreamy Nat, instinctively aware that this is one secret she shouldn't confess to Marina. As teenagers, Holly (Michelle Williams, whose English accent is entirely credible) and Marina (Anna Friel) embrace punk fashions and attitudes, and Marina's inherent rebelliousness assumes a reckless edge. She's the first to lose her virginity, experiment with drugs and betray their friendship. Inexperienced Holly has an ill-timed fling with Nat (Oliver Milburn), who's involved with another girl and about to leave for France. Nat entrusts Marina with a heartfelt letter explaining the situation to Holly, but Marina destroys it, leaving Holly inconsolable over Nat's apparent heartlessness. As the girls enter college, the destructive underpinnings of their friendship bubble to the surface. Holly comes into her own, while Marina parties relentlessly and deliberately sabotages Holly's affair with a pretentious English professor (Kyle MacLachlan). After graduation, Holly acknowledges to herself that the comfortable bond of shared history is inextricably intertwined with the flaws in this longtime friendship, but her attempts to pull away simply make the needy Marina hold on tighter. Directed and co-written by Sandra Goldbacher, this smart, subtle film celebrates the strength of friendship while remaining clear-eyed about the heartache it can bring. Anchored by Friel and Williams's exceptional performances, the film's power lies in its complexity. Nothing is black and white, starting with the girls' complicated relationships with their parents, which are simultaneously nurturing and fraught with psychological peril — Styler delivers an unusually sensitive portrait of an aging good-time girl, and Corduner is quietly brilliant as the gently dependable Max. Even as the story works its way around to a fairly happy ending, the film never loses its the prickly awareness that friendship is an ever-evolving entity filled with unexpected pitfalls, luminous rewards and necessary compromises. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
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