A Mention: "Career Girls" directed by Mike Leigh

In light of the review I wrote yesterday of "Another Year," I would like to mention another Mike Leigh movie that I saw recently and that I think is just about a perfect film: "Career Girls."

The movie takes place over a weekend when two college friends get together, not having seen each other in six years. It's also punctuated by flashbacks of the two of them in college, which really can't be described because they are so amazing. I'll only say this: the performances from the college days were so extreme that at first I honestly wasn't sure if I was supposed to assume that they were at a college for the mentally impaired, and it took me several scenes to come around to understanding that Katrin Cartlidge's character was NOT supposed to be a speed freak, since everything in my body was telling me that people not on drugs don't act like that. Ten minutes in though, I bought it. To me, that ten minute feeling that something must be very, very wrong with an actor is an good indication that a transcendent performance is about to unfold; I remember feeling the same way when I saw Mary Louise Parker play the lead in "Proof" in 2000: there must be something wrong with that girl; why is she playing the role like that? I gotta get out of here, think people will notice if I leave the theater? Well, I still remember that performance and I don't think I'll forget Katrin Cartlidge's performance as Hannah either. Lynda Steadman is also wonderful as Hannah's shy protege-turned-best-friend, Annie.

The flashbacks are all the most arresting and fantastic because the two characters look and behave completely different six years later. Not only that, but - a huge relief to those of us in the five-year-reunion moment of life! - they are a thousand times hotter, saner, and possibly even happier.

Their reunion adventures have them pretending to be rich and looking at real estate, and running into three of the main characters from their shared college past: the roommate they both ditched in order to move in together; a guy they both liked who eventually dumped both of them; an oddball who was living on their couch for a term and developed a crush on Annie that Hannah encouraged, but which never developed into anything. This last run-in, and the subsequent flashback that illuminates it, is what makes the movie not only a poignant and hilarious meditation on friendship and time, but also a deeply sad inquiry into the fact that reminiscing, however poignant or hilarious it may be, is a privilege to which only those who have survived the past are entitled.

I should also mention that Katrin Cartlidge's performance as the grown up Hannah is actually even superior to her performance as the mad child Hannah. With her beautiful horse-ish features and tall languid figure, she has all the arch charisma of Kristen Scott Thomas with considerably more edge. As an adult, she has come to know herself and the sources of her anger, and she no longer throws herself against the world with the shoulder-thrashing meanness she did as a young woman, but when she tells Annie with perfect frankness what her failings and troubles continue to be, one certainly doesn't have any false assurances that her future is resolved. These two performances together paint a portrait of a complicated and lovable person as real as any I can remember.

There's also something fascinating about watching this movie 13 years after it came out. With just enough time having past for the movie to be safely no-longer-contemporary, I had a sense watching it that the present moment in the film was just as calcified in the past as the film's past was. Hannah and Annie would be in their mid-40's now, nearly as far away from their reunion weekend now as they are from college. And actually, Katrin Cartlidge is dead, from a sudden illness when she was 41. Their time in college as well as the present-moment of the film, the weekend in London, are like all moments: presents destined to become pasts. And they are also like all filmed moments: rescued from the wreckage of time by the camera lens.

I wonder if I would have felt that quite as strongly if I had seen the movie in 1997 when it came out. (I did see my first Mike Leigh movie, "Secrets & Lies," in 1996 in the theater with my mom, so I very well might have - but didn't.) I was 14, so probably not! Though I did have a melancholy streak... Who knows. Who knows about any of it, man.