# Career Girls (1997)

### reviewed by
Cheng-Jih Chen

In a weird fit of synchronicity, I'm sitting in this coffee shop, and they have the Cure on the stereo. The "Boys Don't Cry" album I think. The Jungian cosmic coincidence part: I saw the Mike Leigh film last night, "Career Girls", and, in the flashbacks, the Cure provides aural texture for many of its scenes. The movie is about the reunion of two college roommates, 6 years after they last saw each other. The time they were in college was the late 1980s, and I guess Leigh fixed on the Cure as signature music of that time and place.

Movies that take place in whatever decade uses signature music: the Fifties with Elvis and Buddy Holly, the Sixties with the Beatles, Beach Boys, Stones or whatever, the Seventies with disco. Films that span decades, like "Grace of My Heart", changed musical style by the scene. I'm not sure what the music of the Eighties should be. Early Madonna? Boy George? U2 when the filmmaker is trying to convey "earnest?" And ten years from now I suppose we'll hear Trent Reznor and Garth Brooks interspersed with images of Alan Greenspan in "Forest Gump III: Irrational Exuberance".

In any case, Leigh's previous film was the great "Secrets and Lies". The events of that film unfolded when a young black woman decides to find her biological mother. Mom turns out to be a working class white woman. The latter freaks: she never saw the baby, and put her up for adoption immediately after birth. The film also has a second major story, concerning the mother's brother and his family, and their particular struggles. I can't say much more: you'll have to see the movie. It's a fantastic film.

"Career Girls" therefore has to follow one of the best films of that year. It's not a bad film in its own right, but comes up as disappointing given its predecessor. I expected more.

I'm probably following some of the reviews I've read in these comments, but so be it; many of their points are correct. The film takes place in the present, over a weekend reunion. There are extensive flashbacks back to their college days, illuminating certain significant events. In the present, as they go through London, they bump into people who figure in or trigger these flashbacks. Note that the flashbacks don't necessarily happen after they meet someone, but may precede the encounter. Synchronicity by example. It feels forced.

This may be one of the flaws of the film. Or, rather, it's in contrast to Leigh's usual style, as someone noted: the past is used to illuminate the present. In "Secrets and Lies", the present speaks for itself: small gestures, looks and silences describe the characters' histories and relationships. In "Secrets", there is nothing so crude as a handycam traipsing through a messy flat, Robert Smith crooning "Just Like Heaven" in the background. These flashbacks, in my opinion, don't necessarily make it a bad film, but they make it far less subtle than the other one; it's less than what the director is capable of.

I have more or a problem with the past as it's depicted. The characters in their youth are collections of ticks and nervous gestures verging on neurological trauma. These characteristics are actually funny at first, and at second for that matter, but they get tired by the end. And it feels like the film is using a collection of hyperactive spasms in place of more concrete development.

The relationship between past and present is another problem. As said, synchronicity abounds. It closes the events and characters in a tight circle: very little of what's shown in the past and what happens in the present are outside of this circle. I don't necessarily find fault with this particular structure: one can argue that it's tight story telling, with these characters existing solely for this particular tale. But it's different from depth of character found in the previous film. In "Secrets and Lines", there is a background that's not quite illuminated, a feeling that there's a great deal more than what's shown on screen, that there's a lifetime of experience off-camera. In "Career Girls", the matter is closed; there's nothing more here.

And perhaps this leads to a final point. The characters' lives are shown as "empty" in the present. There is a curious disconnect from between the past and the present in this regard. The flashbacks do little to illuminate their lives just before the film starts. They only serve to give background to events during the reunion, and little else. It's as if the characters exist only at two points in time: their years in college and this weekend.

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