High Art

It seemed like Ally Sheedy hadn't done much since "The Breakfast Club" when she starred in "High Art", and she does a pretty good job here as photographer Lucy Berliner, who becomes involved with neighbor Syd (Radha Mitchell), and they both start reevaluating their lives.

I'll admit that this isn't the ultimate masterpiece or anything, but it is worth seeing as a look into the art world. These sorts of movies just go to show why indie flicks are more interesting than anything that Hollywood can conceive. Lisa Cholodenko followed it up with the perplexing, but also worth seeing, "Laurel Canyon". Also starring Patricia Clarkson and Tammy Grimes.

After the trash of the past twenty or so years -- titles withheld to protect the incompetent -- someone finally makes a movie with a lesbian love angle that not only works, but shines. An exquisite performance by Ally Sheedy highlights this haunting study of a woman and the culture which ensnares her. A solid plot, likable -- if not perfect -- characters give flesh and blood to this dark character study. Added kudos to Patricia Clarkson; she took a character who tread the fine line between sympathetic and just plain pathetic and made Greta a complex, but not confusing nor inconsistent, woman. Well done, all around!

A movie with a title like this one is bound to stay unknown and unpopular. Most people don't understand anything about modern art (I'm one of them) and certainly don't want to see a movie about its creation. But somehow I was curious about it, hoping that this movie would explain something about how it all works and that it would give me an insight in this unknown and isolated world.

Syd is the newly appointed assistant editor of Frame magazine, a magazine about art photography, who lives together with her boyfriend in an apartment. When there is a leak in their ceiling, she goes to the neighbors upstairs to complain. But what she didn't know is that this neighbor is no-one else than the talented and once famous photographer Lucy Berliner. Immediately she sees a nice opportunity to boost her career and starts hanging out more with Lucy and her junkie friends, who almost permanently seem to live in Lucy's apartment. She encourages Lucy to shoot new pictures for her magazine, but as they grow closer to each other, Syd's boyfriend becomes more and more jealous and Syd starts to fall in love with Lucy.

What I liked about this movie was that it was about a photographer, but that it never felt pretentious. Lucy felt like a normal woman and not like someone who thinks she is better, just because she is an artist. Also the contrast between Syd's relationship with the down-to-earth Lucy on one side and the pretentiousness of Lucy's drug using friends and the editors from Frame on the other, was refreshing. This isn't a movie that beautified the art world, this showed the hard reality. Take for instance the scene in which the head editors - who pretend to know all about photography - never have heard of Lucy Berliner, but don't want to admit that to their pears and therefor start lying or how they aren't interested in the art itself, but only in the money that it will earn for them as they publish it...

After I had seen this movie and already had decided what rating I would give it, I went to see on IMDb which rating this movie actually received from others. It struck me that most men seem to hate this movie, while almost all women seem to like it. Perhaps it is because those men hoped to see more of the lesbian relationship between the women (including a steaming sex scene), perhaps it was because they believed this was an 'art movie' (which in reality it isn't). Anyway, I'm a man too, but I liked what I saw. I found the contrasts in the story, the delicate love story,... and especially the ending all very interesting and moving. That's why I give this movie at least a 7.5/10.

I am always on the lookout for good lesbian movies with good acting and they are very hard to find. High Art fills both criteria, but every time I watch this movie I feel depressed. I don't know why, especially since I don't mind "dark" movies in the least. The relationships between the characters just feel empty to me. And, I never quite know what to make of the heretofore straight girl who falls for the gay girl. It must be said that the acting is quite good, especially Patricia Clarkson as the drugged out girlfriend of Ally Sheedy. Sheedy is also fantastic as the burned out photographer Lucy Berliner. I just didn't relate to any of these characters or to their relationships with each other, and in the end did not really care who lived or died.

I thought this movie was absolutely beautiful.

To begin with, the cinematography was a wonderful experiment. A variety of contemporary photographers were hired to shoot individual scenes or stills used in the movie. While this device could have left us with a fragmented feeling, it worked quite well to put us in the mind of characters who work in "art" photography.

The plot was poignant and difficult. While it could have left me unsatisfied with a Hollywood ending, it took a bolder route, which in the end was much more satisfying.

I felt that the acting was quite well done. This script could have led to a lot of really dreadful mugging for the camera, but the director got very specific performances from a talented cast.

Though not as widely acclaimed as "Laurel Canyon" I thought this movie was more satisfying. If you liked Canyon, this one definitely deserves to be seen.