Career Girls

British writer-director Mike Leigh in a gentle mood. Hannah (Katrin Cartlidge) and Annie (Lynda Steadman, making her movie debut) were college roommates, but haven't seen each other since graduating six years ago. When Annie comes down to London for a weekend visit, a flood of memories is unleashed. If the film has a weakness, it's that the script relies too heavily on coincidence to trigger the women's recollections: One or even two chance encounters with faces from the past might pass unremarked, but three is too many within an otherwise naturalistic framework. But that's a quibble rather than a criticism: The film's heart is the relationship between Hannah and A...