Mike Leigh 1997 comedy drama Career Girls follows two friends and former university flatmates who reunite after six years apart. With a focus on nostalgia, and themes about the bittersweet futility of trying to recapture the past, it has - like all of Leigh's films - plenty to maintain interest, but it is arguably the weakest entry in his catalogue.
Career Girls sees Lynda Steadman's Annie returning to London six years after graduation to visit her university friend Hannah, played by Katrin Cartlidge. As they catch up on the changes in each other's lives, the film alternates between set in the past and present, showing the times they reminisce about and also revealing their relationships with the small number of characters they encounter again in the present. Typically for Leigh, the heavily improvised dialogue is often witty and often poignant, and the film focuses almost entirely on characterisation, with the very loose plot playing second fiddle to this.
That's all well and good, and a formula that Leigh has frequently made work extremely well. The trouble with Career Girls is that both lead characters are quite irritating, with quirks, idiosyncrasies and personality traits that are used for heavy-handed comic effect but make them hard work to spend nearly an hour and a half with. It doesn't help that Cartlidge and Steadman play Hannah and Annie at two different ages but don't entirely convince as the younger versions, who are somewhat exaggerated caricatures, especially Steadman's twitchy Annie.
Mark Benton also turns on the mannered tics in the past as the girls' friend Ricky, although he's very convincing towards the end when Ricky has descended into mental illness. That however merely highlights the film's other main flaw: the slight plot hinges very heavily on confidence, which the script tries to pass off by discussing coincidence versus synchronicity, as the girls run into both Ricky and former boyfriend (of both of them) Adrian. As Hannah says when they see Ricky, "Coincidence is one thing, but this a joke".
But it's hard to actively dislike. For all its flaws, and for all that Annie and Hannah don't ever quite feel like real people, it ultimately draws the audience in thanks to the emotional heart at the film's core, and the two leads actresses (if not the lead characters) are just likeable enough to allow the viewer to invest in their story, even if only grudgingly. At times, the film is genuinely funny, especially during the then-less well known Andy Serkis's an amusing cameo as the odious Mr Evans. It's also as well directed as one expects from Mike Leigh, once again benefitting from being shot entirely on location and Leigh's regular cinematographer Dick Pope providing the camerawork. Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Tony Remy's score is admittedly slightly dated and slightly intrusive, but not enough to seriously compromise the film.
Over the course of his career, Leigh's film output has veered from light-hearted to serious, and occasionally manages to be both at the same time. Career Girls is very lightweight and almost superficial, but it does at least manage to be entertaining.
Career Girls sees Lynda Steadman's Annie returning to London six years after graduation to visit her university friend Hannah, played by Katrin Cartlidge. As they catch up on the changes in each other's lives, the film alternates between set in the past and present, showing the times they reminisce about and also revealing their relationships with the small number of characters they encounter again in the present. Typically for Leigh, the heavily improvised dialogue is often witty and often poignant, and the film focuses almost entirely on characterisation, with the very loose plot playing second fiddle to this.
That's all well and good, and a formula that Leigh has frequently made work extremely well. The trouble with Career Girls is that both lead characters are quite irritating, with quirks, idiosyncrasies and personality traits that are used for heavy-handed comic effect but make them hard work to spend nearly an hour and a half with. It doesn't help that Cartlidge and Steadman play Hannah and Annie at two different ages but don't entirely convince as the younger versions, who are somewhat exaggerated caricatures, especially Steadman's twitchy Annie.
Mark Benton also turns on the mannered tics in the past as the girls' friend Ricky, although he's very convincing towards the end when Ricky has descended into mental illness. That however merely highlights the film's other main flaw: the slight plot hinges very heavily on confidence, which the script tries to pass off by discussing coincidence versus synchronicity, as the girls run into both Ricky and former boyfriend (of both of them) Adrian. As Hannah says when they see Ricky, "Coincidence is one thing, but this a joke".
But it's hard to actively dislike. For all its flaws, and for all that Annie and Hannah don't ever quite feel like real people, it ultimately draws the audience in thanks to the emotional heart at the film's core, and the two leads actresses (if not the lead characters) are just likeable enough to allow the viewer to invest in their story, even if only grudgingly. At times, the film is genuinely funny, especially during the then-less well known Andy Serkis's an amusing cameo as the odious Mr Evans. It's also as well directed as one expects from Mike Leigh, once again benefitting from being shot entirely on location and Leigh's regular cinematographer Dick Pope providing the camerawork. Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Tony Remy's score is admittedly slightly dated and slightly intrusive, but not enough to seriously compromise the film.
Over the course of his career, Leigh's film output has veered from light-hearted to serious, and occasionally manages to be both at the same time. Career Girls is very lightweight and almost superficial, but it does at least manage to be entertaining.