Rich, finely judged, gorgeously acted movie.

Friendship matters to those of us who still claim membership in the human race, and Goldbacher's merciless autopsy on it is both illuminating and dispiriting.

Has a bracing truth that's refreshing after the phoniness of female-bonding pictures like "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood."

This film's intelligence and forthrightness about the things women sometimes do to one another -- and its resoluteness about where the line should be drawn in terms of selflessness between friends -- set it head and shoulders above most contemporary movies that deal with friendships between women.

Michelle Williams turns in a performance that is seamless, canny and artistically mature.

You won't want to miss it if you care about movies that dare to chart intimacies in our age of spectacle, or about up-and-coming female performers and underused male veterans finding roles worthy of their gifts.

A chick movie? Well, yes, but it's a whole lot cooler than that one with the "Ya-Ya's" in the title.

A powerful new film from British writer-director Sandra Goldbacher.

Offers a clear-eyed chronicle of a female friendship that is more complex and honest than anything represented in a Hollywood film.

The only the bum steer in Me Without You comes in the person of Daniel, played by Kyle MacLachlan of "Twin Peaks" fame. It's hard to tell whether MacLachlan was dealt a bum hand in an otherwise fine screenplay or acted on auto-pilot.

Love. Lust. Recrimination. Jealousy. Resolution. This British female friendship melodrama has them all.

Anchored by Friel and Williams's exceptional performances, the film's power lies in its complexity. Nothing is black and white, starting with the girls' complicated relationships with their parents, which are simultaneously nurturing and fraught with psychological peril.

An engaging, straightforward narrative about two childhood playmates and the stages of their friendship from 1973 to 2001.

The two appealingly played central characters and the film's enjoyable evocation of the 1970s and '80s keep it buoyant and diverting.