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USA 1988
Directed by
Mike Nichols
113 minutes
Rated M

Reviewed by
Bernard Hemingway
3 stars

Working Girl

Unsurprisingly, Mike Nichols' film was a big hit in its day, Not only did it offer a feel-good wish fulfilment for young, single female office workers everywhere, it does it with winning charm and never descends into silliness

Melanie Griffith is Tess McGill, a single girl from working class Staten Island who toils anonymously as a secretary in a Manhattan office. One day she gets a new boss, Katharine Parker (Sigourney Weaver), who promises that they will be a team. But when Tess comes to her with a nifty idea for one of the firm’s client Katharine coolly steals the idea. After Katherine is side-lined by a ski-ing accident, Tess finds out that she has been duped and she comes up with a ballsy ruse. Pretending to be a version of Katharine she takes the idea straight to investment broker Jack Trainer (Harrison Ford). What she doesn’t know is that Jack is Katharine’s boyfriend.

Tess is a relatively unusual figure in American film even this late in the ‘80s - a strong female character who unlike Katharine, who is a power dressing silver-spooned, silky manipulator of corporate affairs (in both sense of the word) has not had the world fall in her lap. But thanks to native intelligence and an unwavering determination to make something of herself, she bravely gambles all she’s got on a roll of the dice. Of course it helps that she’s good-looking but it is not her looks that ultimately get her where she wants to go even if she instinctively knows how to use them (which, mercifully, involves top-to-toe makeover).  What’s more important is her ambition for herself. 

Although the story is pure fairy tale (and a glib one at that with no effort to make Tess's ploy remotely probable) Kevin Wade’s smoothly-articulated script and Melanie Griffith’s buoyant performance carry the day with Alec Baldwin providing a nicely judged turn as Tess’s blue collar boyfriend and Joan Cusack a true fright as Tess's best friend, Cyn. Kevin Spacey and Oliver Platt both appear briefly in undistinguished roles.

Mike Nichols is known for films with a satirical or social commentary tendency such as The Graduate (1967) and Carnal Knowledge (1971) but there is no discernible directorial voice here with only the film’s title suggesting some kind of ironical or critical perspective on the ‘80s idea of success.

 

 

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