Tribeca ’03: Risk/Reward (review)

With their intimate and compelling look at several powerful women in what is still the man’s world of high finance, Xan Parker and Elizabeth Holder demonstrate that even when discrimination isn’t holding women back, their own specially female fears and concerns do a fine job of competing with their drive and ambition. For these four women — including one of the few female brokers on the New York Stock Exchange and a business-school student on an internship getting her first introduction to the industry — the allure of power, wealth, and risk-taking may not be limited to the male gender, but there are issues that only women have to face, like phoning clients while in labor and dealing with the mommy guilt of suspecting your kids are without their mother for too much of their day. But even though these women say they’re in it to make their fortune and then they’re done, they admit they’re hooked on the adrenaline of the game. Whether they can have it all remains up in the air… that they’re trying is their triumph.