ME WITHOUT YOU, directed by Sandra Goldbacher (THE GOVERNESS), follows two girls who promise to be best friends forever. Marina (Anna Friel) is troubled, extroverted, and the product of a broken home, while Holly (Michelle Williams) is a quiet girl who escapes from her overprotective family into a world of books, music, and imagination. As the girls grow up together, their paths diverge but they cling to each other as the one constant in each other's life. Holly also secretly has a strong attraction to Marina's older brother, Nat (Oliver Milburn). Eventually Holly comes to feel trapped by Marina's possessive, controlling friendship, and she realizes that being with Nat is the only way to truly be herself.
Filmed with close attention to period detail, Goldbacher anchors each phase of Holly and Marina's friendship with clothes, production design, and especially music, meant to evoke life in Britain from the 1970s and '80s. From Punk and New Wave to the more materialistic Thatcherite era, Friel and Williams portray two girls desperately trying to keep up with the pace of their lives and the world around them. Ultimately, they have to discover how to be both the girls they were together and the women they have become individually.
Theatrical Release: JUNE 21, 2002
DVD Features:
Region 1
Keep Case
Widescreen - 1.85
Audio:
Dolby Digital 5.1 - English
Director of Photography
Dennis Crossan:
Music
The Clash:
Music
The Stranglers:
Music
Tim Buckley: Musician
Music
Depeche Mode:
Review 1:
"...Friel dazzles....ME WITHOUT YOU evokes its various periods deftly in changing personal styles, enriched with an evocative soundtrack featuring primarily '80s songs..."
Source: Los Angeles Times
p.C24 07/12/2002
Review 2:
"...[A] well-paced drama....[With] finely calibrated performances..."
Source: Sight and Sound
p.60 08/01/2002
Review 3:
"...Psychologically savvy....Ms. Friel gives Marina a bright charismatic snap....Ms. Williams infuses Holly with a quiet glow..."
Source: New York Times
p.E11 07/05/2002
Review 4:
"...Sensitively scripted....[Friel and Williams] both create sympathetic and thoroughly believable individual characters..."
Source: Box Office
p.55 02/01/2002
Review 5:
"...Williams and Friel throw themselves wholeheartedly into emotional fits of competitive sisterhood..."
Source: Entertainment Weekly
p.46 07/26/2002