Career Girls

"Career Girls" is a slightly more light-footed film than Mike Leigh's award-winning "Secrets and Lies", and, to its credit, less highly strung and melodramatic. Leigh's style, not least his direction of the actors, is strenuous, but at the same time he has a knack for balancing on a knife-edge between tragedy and the deeply comic.

Katrin Cartlidge and Lynda Steadman play Hannah and Annie, two old friends who meet again in the late 80s after six years apart. Annie has come to London to spend a weekend with Hannah. In flashbacks the film tells of the career girls' friendship in the eighties, when at first they were merely flatmates but gradually became inseparable friends. At one point they very nearly shared a boyfriend. Annie was the shy, eczema-plagued psychology student, while Hannah was the mouthy English student with her guard up. A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since then - and yet.

The reunion between Hannah and Annie becomes a special experience for them both, as they meet several of the people who meant something to them in their student days. When Annie takes the train back north, the visit and the film are over, but one would have liked to see a little more of the two girls.