Career Girls Reviews

British writer-director Mike Leigh in a gentle mood. Hannah (Katrin Cartlidge) and Annie (Lynda Steadman, making her movie debut) were college roommates, but haven't seen each other since graduating six years ago. When Annie comes down to London for a weekend visit, a flood of memories is unleashed. If the film has a weakness, it's that the script relies too heavily on coincidence to trigger the women's recollections: One or even two chance encounters with faces from the past might pass unremarked, but three is too many within an otherwise naturalistic framework. But that's a quibble rather than a criticism: The film's heart is the relationship between Hannah and Annie, and -- in flashback -- shy, tubby classmate Ricky (Mark Benton), one-time roommate Claire (Kate Byers) and self-absorbed Adrian (Joe Tucker), the lover who nearly drives a wedge between Hannah and Annie. Though Cartlidge and Steadman both give rich, complex performances as both their college-aged and older selves, it's Cartlidge who steals the show. Young Annie may have a flamboyant skin problem (she's a nervous sort), but Hannah is a verbal dervish, a clenched fist of a girl spitting out cutting remarks like razor blades. Like all of Leigh's films it's all talk and not much action, but when talk is as heartfelt and clever as this, that's hardly a drawback.