Me Without You (15) is an intelligent, well-observed story about friendship spanning nearly 30 years.
It begins in suburbia in 1973 (the film opens with a sublime version of the theme song from that old tea-time TV favourite White Horses) with neighbours Marina and Holly enjoying a jolly summer and swearing a bond for each other which they are determined will last for eternity.
We are then privy to how strong that bond is as the years unfold and we are treated to episodes in the lives of Marina and Holly through to the present day.
We first see the two stars who hold the film together Anna Friel as Marina and Michelle Williams (from American TV show Dawson's Creek) as Holly in 1978, when the main influences in their lives are The Clash, plastic bin bags and vodka.
It is here we discover that Marina is the game one, who wants to experiment with drink, drugs and sex. Holly is more reserved, and secretly harbours a crush on Marina's brother Nat (Oliver Milburn).
1982 finds them as students at the same university, sharing the same digs and their friendship is severely tested when they share their tutor Daniel (Kyle McLachlan) too, and not only for lectures and tuition.
And so it goes on, with the girls going through their often turbulent lives with sometimes surprising results as the strains of love and family upheavals take their toll.
The performances are all first rate, with the two leads being particularly outstanding and Williams shaking off her American accent with ease.
The timespan and the episodic structure of the film could have been a major obstacle to the cast and director Sandra Goldbacher, but the characters are interesting enough, the sense of time and place so well captured (the damp and grey seaside setting for the university segment is particularly bleak) and the story has been woven together so well that the film flows smoothly as a mountain stream.
There does come a point in the middle of the 1989 segment that Me Without You begins to test our patience, and one or two characters become irritating, but otherwise this is the type of movie that gives the "chick flick" a good name.
It's got a great soundtrack too.
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