Career Girls (1996)

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  June 4, 2010

  SirPant

  Career girls is a great film. It's still quite sad seeing Katrin Cartlidge though, she was a brilliant actress who I believe would have gone on to do more brilliant work, if you can top what she did achieve. Steadman is also very good, it's a bit of a mystery why she hasn't conti... read morenued a career in film. Benton is an actor I've always liked but he's never been as good as his performance as Ricky Burton. I can totally relate to this film, that though is what Mike Leigh does best, it's just a shame that this film struggled between the success of Secrets & Lies and Topsy-Turvey, as this for me was the better film.

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  November 14, 2011

  SteveStrange

  Two former university roommates reunite six years after graduation. Their professional visages and professional demeanors indicate that they have overcome the uncertainties, insecurities and emotional hurdles of youth. Both are now confident professionals who have reinvented t... read morehemselves. They have metamorphosed from unworldly, naive, socially and romantically inexperienced schoolgirls into very together young women. Or have they?
  
  As the pair rekindle their relationship and reminisce about college days, ghosts from the past are unleashed. The spirits from bygone college days seem to beckon to the old closeted skeletons that were once locked away, but never confronted or reckoned with.
  
  As the girls metaphorically unpack their bags for the weekend reunion, both are forced to brave the issues that emerge from emotional baggage they still carry, but which neither has cared to acknowledge. Career Girls manages to slash away our veneers and force us to examine the shaky framework underneath in a way that is vaguely reminiscent of The Boys in the Band,
  
  

  

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  Career Girls is similar to the more cynical and socially indicting, The Vanities by Jack Heifner (stage production, NOT the musical). The Vanities is a comedy-drama centering on the lives and friendship of three Texas cheerleaders starting from high school. It charts the course of their friendship as well as each girl's individual development as influenced by popular culture, myths and stereotypes.
  
  Flashbacks reveal the evolution of their attitudes, misconceptions and social maturation. We see in a satirical and poignant way how life experience shatters the myths, challenges the stereotypes, and re-molds their characters from being naive cheerleaders to becoming rebellious, cynical, and oh-so worldly.
  
  The Vanities provides a humorous parable about how we progress to become 'older and wiser.' It builds on issues and observations that are ubiquitous enough for us to see ourselves in a way that makes us laugh at times, wince and bite our lips at others. The Vanities saw one of the longest Off-Broadway runs on record.,
  
  The non-linear plot device of using flashbacks in Career Girls produces the same effect. It both charts and silhouettes the girls' journey from 'there' to 'here.' Career Girls traverses a briefer time period than The Vanities, from college to six years after. The focus is on relationships rather than character, what becomes of relationships, what effect they have on the girls, and how and where the outcomes have steered their lives and psyches. Whereas The Vanities makes us laugh, scoff, and cringe, Career Girls makes us laugh, cry and reflect.
  
  The ending to Career Girls, is less cynical than that of The Vanities, but no less devastating. It is poignant, but also sad to the point of being upsetting. It compels us to ponder many of life's more emotional 'what might have been's, in a disturbingly personal way.
  
  
  Movie trailer at:
  
  http://www.videodetective.com/titledetails.aspx?PublishedID=7130http://www.videodetective.com/titledetails.aspx?PublishedID=7130

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• Katrin Cartlidge as Hannah
• Lynda Steadman as Annie
• Kate Byers as Claire
• Mark Benton as Richard 'Ricky' Burton
• Andy Serkis as Mr. Evans
• Joe Tucker as Adrian
• Margo Stanley as Ricky's Nan
• Michael Healy as Lecturer

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