The Banger Sisters (Fully Packaged Import) (Region 2)  (DVD English)

A refreshing take on a well-tried formula, The Banger Sisters proves that there is always room for a polished new "women's picture", particularly one with a high astringent content. The eponymous sisters are a couple of girlfriends with a groupie past who haven't seen each other for years. Suzette (an ebullient Goldie Hawn) has remained a confirmed rock chick. When she's sacked from her bar job, she goes in search of Vinnie (Susan Sarandon) who has excised her past from her life as a staid wife and mother. The performances are good and there are some cracking moments, not least as the initially resistant Sarandon seizes the memory of her youth and sheds her skin of respectability to the bewilderment of her husband and two daughters. Suzette's visit is the catharsis her old friend has long needed. (In many ways, of course, the most interesting aspect of the picture is the one we don't get to see: the long-term consequences of some pretty sleazy old revelations on a middle class family). But there's a pleasing poignancy in Hawn's decision to go home, her work done. And Geoffrey Rush, as usual, is outstanding as Harry, the neurotic writer she has picked up on the way and who could, just possibly, provide some stability in her itinerant life.