Arts & Entertainment • ituvo-cove/e6 Braided Lives British writer/director draws on her own life for a movie about a two-decade friendship. Your chance to win one of 4 Spectacular Events for 40 Fabulous Years of Business! back to the time when she was 11 and enrolled in a school with a Jewish quota. She and Tasha were among the seven Jewish girls permitted per class. n the lushly lit opening "We were called 'Jewesses, — says sequence of Sandra Goldbacher, whose 1998 debut film, Goldbacher's new film, Me The Governess, starred Minnie Driver Without You, two 11-year-old girls, one Jewish, one not, make a pact as an 1840s Sephardic woman who feels as if the word "Jewess" is embla- to be friends forever. zoned on her forehead. They solemnly scribble a "We were shuttled off to sep- note, "Holly and Marina arate assemblies. We felt rather equals Harina; now we two are leprous, which made us want one," then stuff it in an empty to stick together." Charlie perfume bottle and Goldbacher stuck together bury it in the garden. The most with Tasha, "the one per- buoyant comedy-drama traces son who transformed the their overly intense, ultimately world into a thrilling, magical suffocating best-friendship place." from 1973 to the present. Sandra She remembers "the gig- It's a loosely autobiographi- Goldba cher gling, knicker-wetting hyste- cal film for Goldbacher, who ria of pinching makeup and says she wanted to explore the putting it into other people's hand- kind of "intoxicating, mercurial, bags, or running shrieking down the almost addictive friendship" common street from people we pretended were among young girls. out to white-slave us. "I myself had a furiously intense "Tasha certainly tried to poison me best friendship from 11 to 17," the against boys I might have liked, 41-year-old Jewish Brit says by tele- because they threatened our friend- phone from London. "It's haunted me ship," the director says. "The Siamese like a specter. I dreamt of Tasha con- twin-like bond with your best friend is stantly though I hadn't seen her in 20 so seductive it's hard to relinquish. But years. I was hoping the movie might I knew that if we didn't, I wouldn't be exorcise a few ghosts." able to bond with other people." Writing the film took Goldbacher NAOMI PFEFFERMAN Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles In August enter to win our popular Sunday Brunch at the Stage I Served family style at the Stage, Sunday brunch includes: hand sliced nova. sable, whitefish, herring, tuna. cheeses, vegetables, farmer salad, fruits, desserts and beverage...a 5750 Value! etas!" "TEtaktk erte-r-ico Stage Deli • 6873 Orchard Lake Rd. I New Lunch Menu Fettuccini Polo Fiorentina Farfalette Alla Lido White Fish Cardinale Eggplant Parmigiana Chicken Parmigiana Veal Siciliano Tortellini Primavera. 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Parties of 20 people or more LUNCH SPECIALS 4.951 5.95 Dail We Serve Cocktails & Wine 617150 I is the 1970s, and young Holly dreams of the glamorous adult life that will no doubt be hers someday, somewhere beyond her parents' sedate Jewish home in London. It's not that they don't love her; on the contrary, they're chronically overprotective. But even as they're pushing Holly to aim high, her mother has a con- fidence-draining habit of letting slip how mousy she thinks Holly is. Clever is good, she tells Holly, but pretty is better. And pretty is Holly's best friend and next-door neighbor, Marina. Me Without You, the latest film from British Jewish director Sandra Goldbacher, traces Holly and Marina's intense and tumultuous friendship across two decades. Goldbacher wrote the screenplay and drew on her own adolescence in depicting Holly's family life. A spe- cific and familiar portrait of Jewish life in Britain emerges — - although it's not commented upon. • Within the walls of their • home, Holly and her parents are observant Jews. They sit down to a Shabbat meal every Friday night, complete with candles and challah. But to the outside world, they're fully assimilated and British to the core. So its rio surprise that Holly always feels like an outsider, never quite fathoming how most people manage to be happy in their hum- drum lives. She's going to be a writer of some sort, and make a difference. That is, unless her crush on Marina's