Review of Career Girls

Introduction

Career Girls was Mike Leigh’s follow-up to Secrets and Lies, and his last film before his latest Topsy-Turvy. Here Leigh draws on his theatre past having both written and directed this project.

Two old college roommates, Annie and Hannah, decide to meet up with each other after 6 years. Leigh juxtaposes their modern career-driven with their old, depressing student existence. Together they reminisce about what has been and what will be, with the help of a few chance encounters with all friends.

Video

The picture is adequate, with little grain and no artifacts that I could see. However, the picture is also not particularly sharp, and the colours seem very muted. This is probably due to Leigh’s favoured dull palette, but the end result is a picture that is adequate, but not at all impressive.

Audio

As with the picture – it does what is necessary, but nothing beyond. The 2.0 mix is clear enough to deliver the dialogue, in what is an extremely verbal film. I suppose a full 5.1 mix wouldn’t add much, but Film Four could have surprised us with something extra in the audio.

Features

There’s only a trailer - not even subtitles to decipher the often-incomprehensible accents of the cast.

Conclusion

Career Girls has the unfortunate honour of being sandwiched between Leigh’s two best films. This only highlights what a mediocre movie it is. I really did not enjoy Career Girls – first of all, the characters, even after the 6 years, remain annoying and sometimes quite obnoxious. Leigh seems to have created cartoon-like people and contrived meetings with people from the girls’ past in order to set up his lengthy monologues. In the end, I just thought: What was the point? This film didn’t seem to have any purpose whatsoever, except that two old friends have got back together and have changed very little.

Film Four has released a few decent discs in their short-lived time (The Limey is one such example). This however, is not one of them. Whilst the transfer and soundtrack is adequate and almost expected for such a low budget film, the lack of extras confirms that no effort was put into this release. For the hardest of Mike Leigh fans only - would be much better suited to the theatre.