Arts: The week in review

The Film Career Girls

The first film written and directed by Mike Leigh since his international success Secrets and Lies stars Katrin Cartlidge and Lynda Steadman as two present-day businesswomen who, in flashback, remember their scuzzy student days almost a decade ago. With Mark Benton, Kate Byers, Andy Serkis and Joe Tucker.

Cert 15, 89 mins, on selected release nationwide.

Adam Mars-Jones saw flaws: "acting exercises not acts of insights" but "Leigh has yet to make a film without winning moments." "Not vintage Leigh, but even his worst is better than most British filmmakers' best ... Precise, mischievous, almost forensic," declared the FT. "By the end of this wayward yet touching film, Leigh's caricatures have become living people," admired The Times. "Piquantly formed ... There's truth here; affection too and a load of humour," smiled the Standard. "A caricaturist who loves his characters, and who can make us love them too," gloried The Guardian. "Leigh's improvisation style triumphed in Secrets and Lies, but backfires here," sniffed The Mirror. "Leigh is at a loss to develop this situation ... This thin, disappointing film," winced Time Out. "It all seems a bit `So what'," shrugged The Express.

Closer in style and spirit to Leigh's earlier films than the slightly atypical Secrets and Lies.