The distinction of having all four of her films invited to the Cannes Film Festival last year only confirms the obvious, that Jane Campion is very good at what she does. In the words of novelist Helen Garner, who wrote Two Friends, Campion captures "the small mysteries of ordinary life" with an artist's eye. Easy intimacy, and the spaces between people, are the stuff of drama in Two Friends, a portrait of an adolescent friendship in all its fragile passion. A backwards narrative, starting in the present and flowing inextricably toward the past, jars us out of complicity yet profoundly intensifies the story of Louise and Kelly, best friends, and their families during one key year in their lives. We watch the girls un-grow, from the morally-minded, submerged rebel that is Louise and the cast-out, wild woman that is Kelly, toward youthful intelligence and innocence lost in the last giddy screech of childhood. The actors seem spontaneously to embody their characters in unencumbered dialogue. And Campion won't touch the dramatic close-up, the telling cut: her camerawork is static and wide, a clean slate for well chosen angles of silliness, loneliness, and waiting. (JB)