Career Girls

 Year of Release:  1997

Director:  Mike Leigh

Screenplay:  Mike Leigh

Starring:  Katrin Cartlidge, Lynda Steadman, Mark Benton, Kate Byers, Andy Serkis, Joe Tucker

Running Time:  83 minutes

Genre:  Comedy, drama

Two young women, Annie (Steadman) and Hannah (Cartlidge), reunite in London for the first time in six years, when they shared a flat as students.  As the two reconnect, memories of their former friendship resurface, both good and bad. 

Following the multi Oscar nominated Secrets & Lies (1996), British director Mike Leigh went for a much more low key approach with this small, funny and often touching comedy-drama.  It's a character study of two women and deals with how places and people change over the years.  As students, Annie is painfully shy and diffident, suffering from dermatitis on her cheek, while Hannah is loud, arrogant, confident and yet very brittle, masking her feelings with odd affectations and games (such as frequently using her treasured copy of Withering Heights as a divination tool).  Six years on, Annie seems a lot happier, her skin has cleared up, and while still shy, she has a lot more confidence.  Hannah has a good job in a stationary supply company, she is still confident and cutting, but kinder and more at ease.  Not much really happens in the film.  Annie is visiting Hannah for the weekend, and goes around to view flats with her to keep her company.  In the funniest sequence in the film, Hannah trades a succession of barbed one-liners with a sleazy yuppie (played by Andy Serkis) who is trying to sell his flat, but soon seems more interested in Hannah and Annie than property.  Over the course of the weekend they encounter a succession of old friends and boyfriends, perhaps most tragically the stuttering, socially awkward Ricky (Mark Benton) who was a flatmate of theirs in college but ran out when Annie didn't reciprocate his romantic feelings.  Mike Leigh's style involves starting off with only a very vague idea of a plot, and allowing the actors to shape and develop the story along with their characters over long periods of rehearsal, so with the right actors his films are often very perceptive in regards to character, but his technique does not really make for particularly strong narrative.    Katrin Cartlidge (who previously worked with Leigh on Naked (1993)) and Lynda Steadman are both excellent, and they get good support from the rest of the cast.  There is a bit too much coincidence in that they keep happening upon so may old friends over one weekend in a place the size of London, which Hannah does comment on a couple of times, and Hannah especially is pretty unpleasant in her student scenes, but the film is about growth and change and they do win you over.  This is a film where the characters feel like they have a existence outside the film, and by the the film's gently optimistic conclusion, you are left wondering where Annie and Hannah found themselves in another six years.

Annie (Lynda Steadman) and Hannah (Katrin Cartridge) in Career Girls