I must admit the thought of watching a "friendship" movie wasn’t at first as appealing as I thought it would turn out to be, but obviously with Anna taking a starring role in the film (actually even featuring in it to be brutally honest), made it a must-see film.

The premise of the film is the story through childhood, adolescence and early adult life of 2 friends, Holly and Marina, who from a very young age promise to be extremely close life-long companions. This combines as most childhood games do with the two creating their own secret codes and renaming themselves as 1 person "Harina" - "Holly and Marina=Harina" as they quote in the film.

Their lives and bonds are created by the closeness of living next door to each other and become inextricably linked by romance, sex, music, drugs and family. The main link between them for family being the feelings between Holly and Nat, Marina's hard-living brother, played by Oliver Milburn. (who also starred with Anna in the London/Washington stage production of "Lulu").

The movie starts in the 1970's in a middle-class suburb of London, with a very quintessential 70's song "White Horses" (you'll know the song). Throughout the film, the soundtrack continues to represent the differing time periods - from 1970's to late 70's to early 1980's to late 80's - encapsulating punk to new romantic to gothic to grunge. Marina's hairstyles and clothing also continually represent the different eras of their lives during the film - imitating her wild almost carefree attitude to life. Holly's clothes and attitude are almost the complete opposite - quite timid, fearful and somewhat indecisive. She is reticent to commit to many things and finds herself, at times, controlled fully by Marina.

Their friendship undergoes some strain during their lives, especially when the duo both fall for their tutor, Daniel (played by Kyle MacLachlan) whilst at University. The vivacious Marina attaches herself to Daniel by means of her attention-grabbing full-on sexual attraction whilst Holly appeals to Daniel by way of her quiet, intellectual persona. Either way we find out that neither of these matter to Daniel in the end. Eventually the two friends find out about Daniel's liaisons with each of them, but not before it leading to some both tearful, dramatic scenes and some extremely humorous situations. (Watch out for Marina's continual use of a very standard expletive throughout the film - which myself and attending press personnel found very funny at times ).

There are many times during the film that Holly's indecisive nature is tempered by Marina's control and stranglehold on her friend's actions. Eventually Holly realises this and, loathe as she is to do it, confronts Marina to make her see that their lives are diverging and she is in need of her own freedom, separate from the affinity and friendship.

Anna plays the part of Marina superbly well, and is totally successful at portraying Marina as a selfish, sometimes belligerent but ultimately likeable young woman coping with the hand (and family life) she has been dealt. Anna seems to relish in playing some awkward and complex characters, the role of Marina in this venture continuing this trend which indicates how much knowledge in the acting profession she has gained.

Michelle (Williams) contrasts Anna's role by playing the character of Holly with much more subtlety and brooding angst - there seems to be more facial expression than Marina's physical screen presence, and this goes to compliment each other under Sandra Goldbacher's sometimes wonderfully original direction.