Me Without You (2001)

Friendship can prove more complicated than romance. Me Without You follows two British girls from their 1970s preadolescence to contemporary adulthood. Holly (Michelle Williams, Dick), a shy Jewish girl with loving but bookish parents, grew up next to Marina (Anna Friel, The Land Girls), whose glamorous but unstable parents render her flamboyant but a mess inside. The girls form an alliance, each envying the other and finding solace in the relationship, but over time, they sabotage as much as support each other, sometimes at the same time. Both have an affair with a randy college professor (Kyle MacLachlan), but it's Holly's attraction to Marina's older brother Nat (Oliver Milburn) that, in the end, forces the women to redefine their lives. Me Without You is excellently performed and full of telling details. Though the heroines are often confused, the movie has a lucid clarity that is compassionate but open-eyed. --Bret Fetzer Amazon.com

Nostalgia For Me

I'm not a movie person, I'd rather read, but every so often I look for a chick flick or foreign film that's not totally mainstream. I also want to watch a movie that my husband wouldn't or couldn't get just because he's a guy. I loved this movie. I grew up then, I remember these times and these situations, and while life wasn't perfect I had hopes and dreams and friends that I don't have now. So I say if you want some nostalgic and different chick flick watch this(AND by the way I loved Hysterical Blindness as well!), but don't bring a guy. July 28, 2007

BFF

This movie captures the essence of Best Friends Forever. Your best friend is the one person you connect with and share secrets with but as you grow older the relationship must change or it becomes confining. The actors do an excellent job of showing how the relationship can be loving or painful but that imperfection is what sets this movie apart from the hollywood fluff stories. I love the 80's setting. February 18, 2007

It follows you home

At the end of the first time seeing this I didn't like it. Then as the days passed, I kept thinking about it and it snuck into my heart. I watched it two more times before returning it to Blockbuster.
This is a story of a not so perfect friendship. Michelle Williams plays the part of Holly, "the sweetest girl in all the world." She is convincing and charming as an intelligent, shy, overlooked beauty. Her best friend's brother, played by Oliver Milburn, is absolutely captivating and charming. If you don't fall in love with this movie, you'll fall in love with him. The music used fits perfectly into every mood and emotion that is explored in the lives of these two girls.
Anna Friel does a capital job as the loud-mouthed, self-obsessed friend. The contrasts between their personalities and the events that unfold are both heartbreaking and heartwarming. February 3, 2006

Friends Can Be Too Close.

Marina and Holly were best friends as children and vowed to always be together. But as they grow older, the nature of their relationship changes for the worse. Although Marina (Anna Friel) is an outgoing party girl, she seems unable to find an identity of her own and instead relies on the smarter and more introverted Holly (Michele Williams) to provide her with one. Holly is in love with Marina's brother Nat (Oliver Milburn), but Marina's jealousy has always come between them. Holly can hardly have a relationship with any man before Marina claims him for herself, leaving Holly heartbroken. After college, Holly pursues a writing career and Marina seems to make a career of forcing herself into Holly's relationships. For some reason, although she blames Marina for her misery, Holly allows Marina to turn her life upside down.

"Me Without You" is an especially true-to-life character drama. Marina and Holly are both interesting people, and each is sympathetic in her own way. The film's characters, their actions, and their feelings are all believable. Anna Friel and Michele Williams are exceptionally effective in their roles. It turns out that Michele Williams, probably best known for her teen roles in "Dick" and in television's "Dawson's Creek", is a very fine actress. Kyle MacLachlan has a small role as Daniel, one of Holly's and Marina's love interests. A story about a childhood bond that gets out of hand and becomes a co-dependent relationship of disastrous proportions sounds like it might be either a colossal bore or a horror flick. "Me Without You" is neither. Sandra Goldbacher's adept direction moves the story along at a fair clip, and it is easy to share these characters' frustrations. September 19, 2005

Friendships are necessary, but sometimes they are not a good thing

Friendship is an important thing in living and there are plenty of films that tell the stories of great friendships. "Me Without You" would not be one of those films, because you repeatedly have to wonder when you are watching this 2001 film whether Holly (Michelle Williams) and Marina (Anna Friel) really like each other. The two girls grew up living next door to each other in London in the early 1970s, and when they were young, dressing up and bouncing on their beds, they make a pact of eternal friendship. It seems clear this is a mistake, because Holly is the smart one but follows the lead of the dominating Marina, but there is nothing the two can do about it because their lives are so completely intertwined that a trauma for one invariable involves the other as they grow up and move on into the 1980s.

"Me Without You" is directed by Sandra Goldbacher from a script by Goldbacher and Laurence Coriat, and I wonder what personal demons they are exorcising here because the pain and regret rings so true. I also find myself considering this film to be the anti-"Beaches." There you had two young girls who form a friendship because of a chance meeting and who keep in touch over the years, especially during the key moments in their life. Her you have two young girls who form a friendship because they live next door and they have nobody else in their lives. They live together as often as not and are in each other's lives almost constantly, so that every time they fall in love the other seems to be some sort of impediment to living happily ever after. We jump from year to year, with attention paid to what Holly and Marina wear along with the music they listen to, and the question is whether the two will be able to survive their friendship.

You can pick your moment where this friendship clearly becomes dysfunctional and a bad thing rather than a good thing, but I think the die is cast when Holly finally sleeps with Marina's brother Nat (Oliver Miburn). She has had a crush on him since the beginning, but Marina sees this as some sort of betrayal, and from then on Holly is the sympathetic figure in this story, although to some extent she wins that position by default. The division between the two friends becomes starker when they both end up in the bed of Daniel (Kyle MacLachlan), an American lecturing at their college. The both want to sleep with Daniel and he obliges them both, and then is thoroughly befuddled when it turns out the two young women are closer than the thought. For Marina the relationship seems to be nothing more than another competition with Holly, while for Holly the truth takes away all of the joy of an important personal epiphany.

I was not sure why Michelle Williams was adopting a Brit accent to do this film, but she was the reason I checked out this film, not just because I saw a shot of the seaweed scene. To date in terms of "Dawson's Creek" alumni, Williams might be the forgotten one because she does not get big films but she is putting together a solid resume with films like "Prozac Nation" and "If These Walls Can Talk 2." The important thing here is that if Williams's name is enough to get people to see this movie with its almost brutally realistic depiction of friendship between two young women, then so much the better. "Me Without You" is not an uplifting film, but given its honesty it certainly is a refreshing one. September 2, 2005

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