One Actual, One Psychic: Mike Leigh’s Career Girls

In 1997, I was an American college student on a term abroad in London; it was the first time I’d been more than a thousand miles away from the small New Hampshire town where I was born. One of my favorite things about living in a large city for the first time was seeing movies that took place in the place where I was. I was finally living somewhere that was big and interesting and important enough to reflect back to me in popular culture!

I went to see Career Girls, not knowing too much about it other than it appeared to star two women who looked like slightly more attractive than average people I might see at a pub or shopping at Tescos. I wasn’t used to seeing relatively average-looking people centered as movie stars, grinning out from the poster with slightly stringy hair, imperfect teeth, and unpolished nails. I’d never seen a Mike Leigh movie before. I didn’t know it was possible to create an entire body of work about average people and their feelings, fears, and relationships.

The movie opens with Annie (Lynda Steadman) sitting on a train and smiling. She’s on her way back to London to visit her old college roommate, Hannah (the late, great Katrin Cartlidge.) She’s having a snack, she’s dressed nicely if not a bit conservatively, she’s smiling wistfully. We soon find out that she’s smiling at the memory of herself, ten years…