Working Girl

Working Girl (1988) follows a secretary who takes the ferry from Staten Island to Manhattan every morning. Tess goes to night school, studies finance, and keeps trying to get her ideas heard. Her new boss Katharine listens to her idea for a merger and prepares to present it as her own. When Katharine breaks her leg skiing and is away for a while, Tess starts using her office, her clothes and her identity. Mike Nichols directed. Melanie Griffith plays Tess, Sigourney Weaver plays Katharine and Harrison Ford the investment banker. It opens among the commuters on the Staten Island ferry with Carly Simon's Let the River Run over it. The song won an Oscar, a Golden Globe and a Grammy, and Simon became the first artist to take all three for a song she composed, wrote and performed alone. Griffith was nominated for Best Actress, and Sigourney Weaver and Joan Cusack for Best Supporting Actress. It cost 28 million dollars and grossed 103 million worldwide. NBC made a television series from it in 1990 with Sandra Bullock as Tess McGill; it ran twelve episodes. It runs 114 minutes. Good for: eighties office comedy, stories about climbing, and Sigourney Weaver playing badly. Less good for: the resolution depends on Tess being validated by a man, which undercuts the film's own argument. Apart from the rivalry between two women there is no solidarity between them. The office culture and the clothes date it sharply.