Me Without You and the toxic female friendship | Little White Lies

In Praise Of

Me With­out You and the tox­ic female friendship

10 Jan 2021

Words by Lydia Figes

Two women reclining on a bed, wearing green and white blouses.
Two women reclining on a bed, wearing green and white blouses.
San­dra Goldbacher’s com­ing-of-age dra­ma from 2001 pow­er­ful­ly por­trays the per­ils of female intimacy.

The last decade saw a spate of films cen­tred around female friend­ship, from Frances Ha and Girl­hood to Lady Bird and Books­mart. But at the oth­er end of the genre spec­trum lies San­dra Goldbacher’s poignant fea­ture Me With­out You, which rather than glo­ri­fy the sanc­ti­ty of female friend­ships, goes against the idea that women should always remain friends. As the title sug­gests, the film cen­tres on a slow-burn­ing breakup.

Set against the back­drop of late-1980s Britain, the film close­ly exam­ines the tur­bu­lent friend­ship of Hol­ly (Michelle Williams) and Mari­na (Anna Friel). Neigh­bours and best friends since child­hood, their inno­cent rela­tion­ship becomes one of semi-abu­sive code­pen­den­cy as both women strug­gle to come to terms with adult­hood, the respec­tive fail­ings of their par­ents, as well as their own iden­ti­ties, inse­cu­ri­ties and desires. At the heart of the film lies an uncom­fort­able truth: that inti­mate rela­tion­ships have the poten­tial to descend into suf­fo­cat­ing encroachment.

A nos­tal­gic throw­back to the era of Joy Divi­sion, Depeche Mode, The Stran­glers and Adam Ant, Me With­out You takes place in sub­ur­ban North Lon­don and Brighton. It’s a time of rebel­lious hedo­nism infused with a streak of anar­chy and promis­cu­ity. That the sto­ry is set in the 80s is cru­cial, as it is sig­nif­i­cant­ly dis­tanced from the fem­i­nist activism of the 60s and 70s, but pre­cedes the third-wave fem­i­nism of the 21st cen­tu­ry. Me With­out You is not a film about female sol­i­dar­i­ty or mar­ketable Girl Pow­er’, and in this sense it reflects a time that was not pre­oc­cu­pied with those notions. On the con­trary, it unflinch­ing­ly con­fronts the nefar­i­ous behav­iour­al pat­terns of two young women who enable one another’s self-loathing to the point of destruction.

Hol­ly is from a mid­dle-class Jew­ish fam­i­ly, and is con­stant­ly told she is smart but not pret­ty. Her moth­er tells her as a child: Some peo­ple are pret­ty peo­ple and some peo­ple are clever peo­ple, which is more impor­tant than looks.” Mari­na, mean­while, is repeat­ed­ly told that she is sex­u­al­ly desir­able even when she is pre-pubes­cent. The con­stant appraisals of her appear­ance unsur­pris­ing­ly results in her feel­ings of worth­less­ness, pro­pelling her to become promis­cu­ous and prone to solic­it­ing the atten­tion of men. Unlike Holly’s moth­er, Marina’s moth­er says to her as a child: You’re a gor­geous girl, dar­ling. Don’t eat too many choco­lates though, you’ll get porky thighs.” Fat-sham­ing and lat­er slut-sham­ing become per­ma­nent fix­tures in Marina’s life.

What Goldbacher’s film bril­liant­ly artic­u­lates is that through con­stant com­par­i­son from child­hood a self-ful­fill­ing prophe­cy occurs: the two girls learn to assume and become the roles soci­ety has pro­ject­ed onto them. They fall into an age-old sex­ist trap – the one which harm­ful­ly main­tains that women can only be beau­ti­ful or smart, but nev­er both. They rep­re­sent to the oth­er one the qual­i­ty which they are told they are lack­ing in. As a con­se­quence their friend­ship becomes a pre­car­i­ous bal­ance of oppo­sites, even­tu­al­ly devel­op­ing into a jeal­ous bat­tle where­in loy­al­ty and resent­ment clash.

There’s no me with­out you” is Marina’s mantra, who con­trols and manip­u­lates Hol­ly, see­ing her mousy, pen­sive bestie as an exten­sion of her­self and a reminder that she can suc­ceed as the out­go­ing, pret­ty’ one. Hol­ly, the more intro­spec­tive of the two, even­tu­al­ly decides she no longer wants to con­form to the type’ she has been boxed into and so dis­tances her­self from the rela­tion­ship. By this point she had already fall­en in love with Marina’s old­er broth­er, Nat, who to his sister’s annoy­ance loves Hol­ly back. The cracks in their friend­ship are irre­versibly formed when both girls fall for their phi­los­o­phy tutor, Daniel, played by Kyle Mach­lach­lan. Their duplic­i­ty is revealed to one anoth­er as they sep­a­rate­ly dis­cov­er that he has been hav­ing an affair with both of his young students.

By the end of the film, Hol­ly admits to her­self that she and Mari­na have remained friends out of a dis­placed sense of loy­al­ty, rather than because they still tru­ly see or like one anoth­er as indi­vid­u­als. Inge­nious­ly, Gold­bach­er doesn’t allow the view­er to feel more com­pas­sion for one woman over the oth­er, while also high­light­ing a peren­ni­al truth about life and com­pan­ion­ship: that friend­ships are more frag­ile than we think but also need space to sur­vive. The film teach­es us that in order to allow life-long friend­ships to thrive, with­out becom­ing tox­ic, we must some­times set bound­aries from those we love the most.

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