Me without You

REVIEW
Though its running time is relatively brief, Goldbacher's piercing drama covers much ground and has plenty to say about relationships, rivalries and the contradictory bonds of friendship. Marina and Holly are childhood friends who have remained together through the best and worst of times. Tracing their lives through three eras makes for an ambitious journey, but the film jumps the hurdles of this kind of storytelling with strong lead performances and a story that stings with both the pleasure and pain that true friendship brings. The '70s present the girls throughout their freewheeling college life, where they find themselves attracted to (and betrayed by) the same men, while the '80s finds them starting their professional careers, still with guy problems, personal development differences and the kind of fierce female competition that sometimes make a friendship a hard load to bear. Goldbacher gets the feel of each decade just right without letting design or costumes get in the way of her characters' development. And Williams proves there is life beyond "Dawson's Creek" with her tempered, nuanced performance (and one heck of a British accent).