From the naughty north and the sexy south (Career Girls (DVD))

Member Name: Katz1

Product:	Career Girls (DVD)
Date:	09/10/01 (837 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Excellent acting

Disadvantages: Too many plot coincidences

This is a Mike Leigh film. You know, Mike Leigh, that director bloke from Manchester who directed “Secrets and Lies”, “Life is Sweet”, and “Abigail’s Party” (amongst others). Still not sure? Ok, I’ll give a brief rundown on his style:

Mike Leigh has a very unusual approach to film-making - he doesn’t write scripts. What? you ask, how can this be? How on earth does he make a film then? Apparently, his method is to bring together a few select, incredibly talented (but not necessarily famous) actors and basically make them improvise (observing them in the process, presumably giving some advice here and there). This is not a fast process, sometimes it has been known to take months before a believable scenario and characters have been created. Anyone who has done GCSE drama or A-level theatre studies will be aware of the technique, and know how difficult such improvisation is, but the interesting thing about it is that here it works; some very believable dialogue ensues and you are left with a film that is pretty much true to life (although slightly exaggerated). “Career Girls” is no exception and the two main characters, Hannah and Annie, played by Katrin Cartlidge and Lynda Steadman respectively (two great, if not well-known actresses), are quite convincing as single, thirty-something friends, who are meeting up for the first time in six years.

The entire film is based around this one scenario; a weekend in London for a Wakefield lass and a London girl who haven’t seen each other since they flat-shared at college in Bournemouth (I think, some seaside resort in southern England any way). It is a weekend of reminiscences, of bumping into old college friends and lovers, it is also a weekend of revelations and of rediscovering friendship.

Doesn’t sound like a very interesting scenario really, does it? Well, it’s not “War and Peace”, nor is it in any sh
ape or form a Hollywood blockbuster, thank goodness, but it does have its own charm. This film has been put in the comedy section of Dooyoo. True, it does have comic aspects to it, Hannah’s barbed wit in particular and her ability to put down irritating, arrogant men, but it is also quite serious. I would class it more as a drama in the vein of “Secrets and Lies”.

The film uses flashbacks to portray their life in college – how they met approximately ten years earlier, the friends they made, the good times they had, and the bad (including petty rivalries and embarrassing situations). Annie, the one supposedly from Wakefield, is painfully shy at college – she has bright orange hair, an incredibly bad complexion and is incapable of looking anyone in the eye, making use of her long, spiky fringe to hide her face. Hannah, on the other hand, is a bit of a loud mouth, aggressive and tom-boyish, pretending not to care for anything or anybody. Add to this odd pairing a hefty bloke from Newcastle with a stutter (Ricky, played by Mark Benton who you may recognise from his bit parts in various TV dramas such as Boon and Ballykissangel) and an 80’s fashion victim Essex girl type (Claire) and you have the other members who share the most disgusting, grotty student flat imaginable.

These flashbacks really test the skill of the actors as they have to look ten years younger, wear eighties clothes and also act ten years younger (which is probably the most difficult task). It is often funny, in an embarrassingly painful way – I’m afraid I cringed at Annie’s voice. I’m from Wakefield and felt that her high-pitched, nervous, whiny voice in the broad, supposed Wakefield accent gave a poor impression of the city (I hope people do not think we all speak like that), even though to some extent she did remind me of a friend of mine who is actually still living there.

In the present, they both appear to be
successful “career” women, as the title suggests. They seem smart and confident. Annie returned to Wakefield after college and is still working there; she no longer has the terrible complexion nor inability to look at people (although she is still quite shy), and Hannah, who stayed down south pursuing her career, is no longer quite so scary. On the surface, they are much more ‘together’ than they were at college although, in reality, they still have a lot of emotional baggage. The most distressing part of the film for me, is when they bump into Ricky in the present – I’d rather not say why, in case it spoils the film for those of you yet to see it, but it seems to be a comment on life, how some people are able to come to terms with their past, learn from it and move on, whereas others are dragged down by their experiences and are unable to move forward and even degenerate.

So is it a film worth seeing?

In my opinion, yes, definitely. I saw it when it came out at the cinema in 1997 when I was still at university and there are aspects of their college life which strike close to home (although perhaps because this bit is set in the eighties, I didn’t relate that much). I’ve seen it a couple of times since on video and it isn’t a film you need to see at the cinema and is a film you can watch more than once.

Don’t go to see it if you only enjoy high action Hollywood type films – you don’t get that with this film, but then that isn’t what Mike Leigh films are about. It is the characters and their relationships with one another and with others that is important. It is also the fact that it is set in recognisable English towns with recognisable types of people. If you like films such as “Little Voice”, “Secrets and Lies”, and “Saving Grace”, you will probably enjoy this one.

The only problem I had with it (and the reason I did
n’t give five stars) was that there were just too many coincidences in the present. Annie is only visiting Hannah for a few days, yet they manage to bump into nearly everyone they were at college with – highly unlikely, although I realise that it is a necessary aspect of the story line, which I suppose means you have to suspend disbelief a little. The other problem was that the characters (especially as students) were not fully convincing. They were very good but I couldn’t relate properly to any of them, Annie was just a bit too shy and Hannah was just a bit too aggressive and there were a few stereotypical student bits that I doubt are that true to actual student life even in the eighties. I’m not saying there are not people like that around, but to find so many misfits all in one place, again seemed a bit (though not entirely) unlikely.

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