Career Girls

I was pleasantly surprised with this movie. It came on HBO the other night, and it was late so I was about to go to bed. I decided to just watch the beginning, but started to become quite interested in it. It turned out to be a pretty darn good little movie and I am glad I stayed up to watch it. Although it is a little different and a little slow, I thought it was a genuinely good movie with some very powerful performances. The characters are strong and the story is simple, but sweet.

This is one of Mike Leigh's more easy-going efforts, overall, a bit mannered, sort of an urban picaresque, "Naked"-lite if you will. When I saw it on initial release, I liked it fine, but thought it would be memorable mainly for particular bits--the very funny scene with the obnoxious yuppie flat owner, the very powerful scenes with Mark Benton as Ricky--rather than for any coherence. I saw it again this week and it is sticking in my mind with more impact than before; to me it now resonates as a meditation on the need to get on with one's life, and the costs (in friendship, soulfulness, caring) of doing so, and the tragedy of those who just can't make the jump. Not one of Leigh's greatest films, but like everything he's made, well worth the time.

Yes, this film has been panned by many, but in my view Mike Leigh was near top form again with this absorbing and moving film. The late, great Katrin Cartlidge puts in an excellent performance. Dreadfully sorry to learn that such a talented young stage and screen actress has died. Lynda Steadman is also superb.

The film is partly in flashback to college days in the 1980s and partly set in the "present" of the 1990s. I see the exaggerated twitching and accents of the characters in the 1980s scenes as part of the flashback genre. Perhaps I went to University with exceptionally twitchy people, or perhaps the memory pitches college-days memories at 30 frames-per-second, but my own "flashbacks" to such times feel a bit like that. I thought it was intriguing cinematography, but the majority seems to be against me.

Where the film does grate a little is in the coincidences that lead them to run in to their past several times. Two of the coincidences are necessary for the plot and interest. One seems like "a coincidence too many" and it goes nowhere - maybe there was an intended plot thread that got dropped - well the coincidence should also have been dropped in that case.

It's a short film and it held our attention from start to finish. Not Mike Leigh's very best film, but well worth seeing.

When I saw Mike Leigh's Naked, the first time, one word, genius, never left my mind. I still think it is one of the most intelligent pieces of filmmaking I have ever seen.

About 180 degrees away in its subject matter, Career Girls affects me even more strongly. The idea that a couple of college girl-chums might get together after a few odd years, is nothing new. The film effectively puts their relationship under a microscope, in two drastically different times of maturation, the college years, and the 10 or so years after. Under that scrutiny each will blossom, brilliantly, through the short span of the film, much like a rose blooms in time-lapse photography. It's a helluva notion. Leigh accomplishes it all brilliantly.

We have all seen buddy pictures, and Career Girls is no 48 Hours, or Lethal Weapon. It's a truly sensitive look into the human soul, the human heart portraying a friendship we only imagine.

This film literally leaves me breathless.

As a life-long Mike Leigh fan, I first saw CAREER GIRLS on its cinema release a couple of years ago. No, it didn't make quite the same impact as (for example) NAKED or SECRETS AND LIES, but nonetheless it does boast impressive and detailed performances from its lead actors. Katrin Cartlidge's work was always intense and magnetic (I was lucky enough to see her on stage in Theatre de Complicite's MNEMONIC in 1998) - and her recent, tragic death from septicaemia in September 2002, aged 41, was a desperately sad loss to top-notch acting and independent film making.