Career Girls
Mike Leigh, 1997
“On a clear day you can see the class struggle from here”
Following the success of the harrowing Secrets & Lies and the apocalyptic Naked, at the end of the nineties Mike Leigh turned to a smaller, more intimate subject, the nostalgia for youth. Leigh’s been vocal about his motivation for Career Girls, explaining that he was interested in the differences between what happens to us between ages 20-30, and how that’s a bigger change than between 30-40, and subsequently 40-50. Ultimately Career Girls is a story of love between two, and perhaps three, college friends, who meet under the mundane student circumstances of simply needing a place to live. It’s a film that’s stayed with me for many years, and is one of those stories that often reaches beyond the screen and into your heart as you recall the friends you’ve lost touch with.
The story’s told through the lens of two seemingly very different women. The spiky, intense and verbally dexterous Hannah (Katrin Cartlidge), whose ferocious sarcasm belies a deep family sadness, a need to be loved and genuine tenderness for others. And Annie (Lynda Steadman), a shy, anxious and emotionally damaged goth, perpetually involved with the wrong guy at the wrong time. The story flips back and forth between flashbacks of their life together as students in London, and their present-day lives as career-oriented women, reconnecting and reminiscing after many years apart. Gone are the ripped student sweaters and Dr. Marten’s boots, now safely replaced with beige pants and comfortable blazers. Gone are the verbal barbs, literary references (there’s some wonderful scenes where they consult Emily Brontë for life advice) and the intense sarcasm, wonderfully written by Leigh as always. These are replaced with a genuine tenderness and care for each other, and the understanding that they were with each other through one of the most important and formative times in their lives. Also gone is Ricky (Mark Benton), a lost soul and fellow student which they befriend, and whose mental struggles form much of the film’s narrative.
As bleak as many of Leigh’s earlier work is, and especially following the violent odyssey of Naked, Career Girls is a quieter, calmer, more tender exploration of the nostalgia for those we go through college with, and what it means to reflect on those shared experiences later in life. Hannah and Annie’s lives are in very different places now, but there’s a powerful shared DNA of experience that will always connect them. As they catch up, they fondly recall former flatmates and nights out, but also, in typical Leigh fashion, unearth some long-buried unhappiness.
As someone who lived through the student years in London which form Leigh’s backdrop to Hannah and Annie’s story, it’s a startlingly accurate depiction of what that life was like. Even at the time of watching the movie in the theater, I couldn’t help but feel like I was recognizing so many of the places they go. That the film held up a mirror to my own experience. The smoke-filled pubs, the after-hours visits to the local chip shop, the soulless lecture halls, and the bohemian squalor of a student apartment. It’s all here in terrifyingly accurate detail, and even at the time, I remember watching and thinking ‘wow, this is exactly what it’s like’. Now, myself a modern-day Annie, looking back on my student years of twenty five years ago, and returning to education at UPenn, those memories are still just as fresh, especially for those souls long lost to the process of departure and separation once the course has ended and real life begins.
As Hannah and Annie reminisce over a good bottle of wine, they recall the men in their lives. The emotionally abusive boyfriends, their relationship with their fathers, and especially their friend Ricky, a chaotic, but intelligent and honest lad on the same philosophy course as Annie. Ricky suffers from undiagnosed mental illness, and has genuine feelings for Annie that unfortunately for him aren’t reciprocated. This leads to one of the most memorable scenes in the film, his exit from their lives and his life as a student, and perhaps even his departure from society. Soon afterwards they track him down, lost, angry and delirious wandering around the sea front and back living with his mother. They enquire how he is, and that they’ve been worried about him, as he shouts and swears that he doesn't care. They chase after him and he screams at them to leave him alone. Forward to the present day, Hannah and Annie decide to visit their old apartment. They find Ricky sitting outside, dishevelled and confused. He mumbles through a recollection of what’s happened to him, but following the death of his mother he’s only descended further into sickness and ill mental health. They attempt to comfort him, but again he rejects their kindness.
Leigh would later turn much of his focus to historical portrayals of Englishness, with the gorgeous period designs of Topsy-Turvy (1999), Mr. Turner (2014) and Peterloo (2018). But it’s his claustrophobic, acerbic, verbally violent work from the nineties which truly stands out, and while Career Girls is often eclipsed by the the equally wonderful Secrets & Lies and Naked, it remains one of my favorite films. Writing at the time, Janet Maslin from The New York Times described Career Girls as an acerbic exploration of what’s underneath the ‘veneer of adulthood’, which is a powerfully accurate description of Leigh’s work. For many of us still in education, the resonance of the film might be easy to miss, but it’s one of those movies that stays with you many years after the credits roll.
Career Girls is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel and YouTube.
