During a long, hot summer in seventies London, young neighbors Holly and Marina make a childhood pact to be friends forever. For Marina, troubled, fiercely independent, determined to try everything, Holly stays the only constant in a life of divorcing parents, experimental drugs and fashionable self-destruction. But for Holly, a friendship that has never been equal gradually starts to feel like a trap.
Goldbacher draws on an elegant visual sense and a talent for easy, seductive pacing ... but she and writing partner Laurence Coriat don't manage an equally assured narrative coinage.
– Hazel-Dawn Dumpert,
L.A. Weekly,
23 Aug 2002
fresh:
A well-made and often lovely depiction of the mysteries of friendship.
– Moira MacDonald,
Seattle Times,
30 Aug 2002
fresh:
Both illuminating and dispiriting.
– Stephen Hunter,
Washington Post,
13 Sep 2002
fresh:
Feels like a late-baby-boomer family album.
– Michael O'Sullivan,
Washington Post,
13 Sep 2002
rotten:
Although the film deserves some points for trying to describe the intensity of best-friendship between girls, it fails to make them interesting people.