'High Art' is the kind of hard-core art film that cries out for
understanding. It's repetitive imagery is a reflection of its surreal,
moody and often abbreviated characterizations. It has all the qualities
of sleaze, drama, reality and blemishes of the soul that a sophisticated
movie buff can and should appreciated. What it lacks in the area of
common story telling is compensated by its uncompromising look at the
alternative side of some people's lives.
Ally Sheedy stars as Lucy, a semi-retired photographer who never really
understood the beauty of her work. She watches over her materialistic
mother who spends six thousand dollars in the blink of an eye on her
American Express card and can't remember what she spent it on. She and
her friends are primarily drug addicts and drifters in life. One in
particular (Patricia Clarkson), is a German movie actress of limited
stature who doesn't seem to care about the effects of snorting dope and
she lives her life in a constant state of flagrancy.
The protagonist in the film is Syd (Radha Mitchell). She is an
assistant editor of a fashionable New York City magazine who discovers
Lucy's work and asks her superiors if they're interested in looking at
her work. Her superiors are aware of who Lucy is. Sort of an
underground hero of the photographic art world, Lucy agrees after a
meeting with Syd and her superiors, to do a piece for the magazine, and
throughout the course of their working relationship, Lucy and Syd become
lovers. Greta and Lucy also have a past and they never quite end their
relationship until later in the film as the film's sub plot is sort of
an exploration of their feelings for each other.
Paced in a very sedate manner, writer/director Lisa Cholodenko finds the
emotional core of each character in the film as being very
straightforward and brings absolutely no glamour whatsoever to any of
their lives or appearances and this is the film's strength. Appearances
count for a lot in this film. Sheedy and Mitchell look very comfortable
and convincing in their roles and their performances are extraordinarily
sharp.
There isn't a false note in this film which runs a perfect 101 minutes.
Not too long or too short. It has Oscar worthy performances from Sheedy
and Clarkson and after watching Ally Sheedy in films from the 80's such
as 'WarGames', 'The Breakfast Club', 'St Elmo's Fire', 'Short Circuit',
her career in the 90's has become a true showcase of her real depth and
talent as an actress.
As a modern day tale of tragedy, 'High Art' has few flaws and fewer
shortcomings and is filled with interpretive dialogue showing the
nervous calculation of each life it chooses to document. Some to the
extreme and some to a lesser extent. But in the end, one will most
likely walk away from it remembering not how it looked but rather how it
felt.
Copyright © 1998 Walter Frith
