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.
This is one of those films that is so riddled with stupid personal choices from the characters that I lost interest fairly quickly. We start in the early 1970s as "Marina" (Anna's Poppelwell then Friel) and best friend "Holly" (Ella Jones then Michelle Williams) grow up together. The former girl has an absentee (pilot) father and a mother who is great fun - so long as she can pop a valium or two. The latter girl is a bit more stable, and it's that stability that provides "Marina" with a rudder through her increasingly Bohemian life. Each time she messes up, "Holly" is there to the rescue. Gradually, though, the penny drops for "Holly" as she realises that her own life is being subsumed into that of her friend. They even end up sharing blokes, wittingly and otherwise. The challenge for "Holly" now is how to assert herself and live her own life without her mate doing her own version of the Hindenburg. It's quite wittily poignant at times, but the inherently repetitive nature of the frying pan to fire scenarios and the unlikable nature of both of these women didn't really do it many favours as it trundles along. In principle, it addresses the complexities of addiction - not just booze and pills, but for an affection not just related to sex. In practice, though, it's a messy and incomplete analysis of two uninteresting people surrounded by men who all seemed to deserve each other. There's also far too much dialogue and after a while it just starts to fade into a background of mediocrity with the rest of this. Not for me, sorry.