Career Girls

The inimitable filmmaker Mike Leigh’s affection for spirited, irrepressible figures whom society too often overlooks shines through every frame of this wonderfully tender, bittersweet ode to female friendship and hard-won inner growth. Born out of the singularly collaborative, improvisational rehearsal methods that give Leigh’s characters their multidimensional richness and unforgettable spark, Career Girls features vividly idiosyncratic performances from Katrin Cartlidge and Lynda Steadman as former roommates who reunite in London six years after striking out on their own. Over the course of a weekend full of laughter, tears, memories, and chance encounters, they confront what it means to revisit the past—in the form of both wounds that haven’t fully healed and bonds that can never be broken.