‘Me Without You’: Sandra Goldbacher’s compelling study of the complexities of female friendship
Navigating the murky waters of girlhood is often made easier by forming friendships with other girls and finding solace in each other as issues like puberty and patriarchal expectations weigh down heavily. These friendships can be intense and even twin-like, a form of comfort in a world which hardly feels like it prioritises the interests of women and young girls.
In Sandra Goldbacher’s second film, Me Without You, she highlights the ups and downs of an intense female friendship, exploring intersections such as class and religion. Starting when the girls are young, we meet Holly and Marina, inseparable friends and neighbours. The pair are seen playing a trust game, guiding each other over pieces of broken glass while blindfolded. From the beginning, Goldbacher emphasises the duo’s dedication to each other before anyone else, giggling and running away from Marina’s older brother, Nat, while he’s blindfolded, a foot tentatively hovering over a shard.
While Holly’s parents are kind and supportive, her house warm and cosy-looking, Marina’s household is much colder, a clinical kind of glamour decorating the rooms, where we see Holly, Marina, Nat and the latter pair’s mother lounging on a bed. In this scene, Marina’s mother comes across as instantly unlikeable; she’s more concerned with appearances than anything, making comments about body image even though the girls are no more than ten. Despite their obvious differences, the girls don’t take class, religion, parents or appearance into consideration; they just like hanging out with each other – even calling themselves ‘Harina’.
However, as the girls hit their teenage years, the influence of punk and partying takes hold, and Holly loses her virginity to Nat during a drug and alcohol-fuelled gathering where both Holly and Marina fashion themselves matching bin-bag dresses. Meanwhile, Marina tries heroin, stumbling into a bathroom with one of her brothers’ friends. The pair both disapprove of each other’s actions, marking the first crack in their perfect friendship. As they begin to discover their own minds, the girls slowly begin to drift, their relationship ebbing in and out of closeness.
Goldbacher’s depiction of friendship is relatable for many viewers, awarding female viewers a chance to see the kinds of close relationships that shape our childhoods and teenage years – ones that are rarely given accurate depictions on the big screen. Only a female filmmaker could understand just how complicated, messy and all-consuming close female friendships can be, sometimes causing as much or more pain than a romantic relationship. Holly and Marina both make mistakes and betray each other, but they keep finding their way back to each other, intertwined by a lifetime of knowing each other and growing up together.
The depiction of female friendships on screen often fails to dig deep enough into the complexities of platonic love, but Goldbacher truly captures the experience of growing up and realising that the person you have spent so much time with isn’t actually perfect – you might even have nothing in common anymore. All of a sudden, that sense of solidarity slips as everything from drugs, education, religion, men, jobs, and distance get in the way.
Goldbacher often employs a comedic approach, giving the film a sense of realism and relatability. Through her flawed characters, she suggests that such long friendships are rarely linear, that periods of closeness will come and go, and in some instances, you might have to give up on the person you once couldn’t be without. As Marina cries to Holly, “there’s no me without you,” Goldbacher explores how influential and foundational – but also toxic and codependent – friendships can be.