The Mail on Sunday - 25 November 2001

"Me Without You" Review - Teenage Kicks Hit The Spot

Bold and British, Sandra Goldbacher's Me Without You is one of the most enjoyable homegrown films I've seen this year. It oozes a refreshingly confident style, boasts a witty script and deals dynamically with that notoriously undramatic subject: friendship. True, it suffers from an undernourished plot, but it has warmth and energy without recourse to gangsters or any desire to be American.

Goldbacher is writing and directing from fertile memory. This is a reminiscence of a friendship between two girls who grow up next door to each other in a comfortable North London suburb during the Seventies. Anna Friel is very cute as flighty, flirty Marina, envied by her dowdier, more thoughtful Jewish neighbour, Holly, played impressively by American actress Michelle Williams.

The film follows the girls from teens to university, through early career pains up to the present day. Highlights include the scene where they give each other love-bites (oh, that anna Friel, she is a one for same-sex kisses) before going to a party where "there might be someone from The Clash"; and the Eighties segment at university at Brighton.

The film sees friendships as love - suffocating and powerful unless given space to grow. But what I liked most about Me Without You is that it looks for poetry, laughter and beauty in life while still being British.

- Jason Solomons (4 out of 5)