HIGH ART (October) Starring: Ally Sheedy, Radha Mitchell, Patricia Clarkson. Screenplay: Lisa Cholodenko. Producers: Dolly Hall, Jeff Levy-Hinte, Susan A. Stover. Director: Lisa Cholodenko. MPAA Rating: R (nudity, drug use, profanity, sexual situations, adult themes). Running Time: 101 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
Watch Radha Mitchell long enough, and I'll bet you'll start seeing a young Mariel Hemingway. Watch HIGH ART long enough, and I'll bet you'll start seeing a heroin-chic spin on PERSONAL BEST. The "lesbian awakening" genre may hardly rival the mis-matched buddy comedy in sheer weight of numbers, but the conventions are just as conventional in their own way: wide-eyed naif, experienced older woman, tentative first steps, heartfelt discusson over what the wide-eyed naif really wants, oppressive earnestness. Been there, done that, seen it all.
There's one thing in HIGH ART, however, that I can virtually guarantee you haven't seen before: Ally Sheedy as a Serious Actress. Sheedy plays Lucy Berliner, a one-time shining star in New York photo art circles who burned out and disappeared for over a decade. Now living with her heroin-addicted lover Greta (Patricia Clarkson) and a cadre of perpetually stoned hangers-on, Lucy is inadertently re-discovered by her downstairs neighbor Syd (Radha Mitchell), who also happens to be a young assistant editor for a classy photo journal. Realizing she's on to a career-making scoop, Syd begins working with Lucy on a new layout, only to find her fascination growing more personal and less professional with each passing day.
Sheedy's performance alone is nearly enough to recommend HIGH ART, and you can color me as stunned as anyone that you're reading those words. Sheedy inhabits the character -- a woman who wants to return to her art but doesn't know if her past will permit it -- with an intensity only autobiographical subtext can provide sometimes. The impish grin of the teen star of WARGAMES and THE BREAKFAST CLUB now nestles in the lines of a haggard, drawn, aged-beyond-her-years face; you can see the spark under there somewhere, ready for an opportunity to burst out. The performance is never showy, but Sheedy manages to capture both the resigned co-dependence in her relationship with Greta (played by Clarkson as a mumbling black hole of self-pity) and the glimmer of hope she sees for a new life.
Sadly, the rest of Lisa Cholodenko's script -- an inexplicable award-winner at Sundance -- strands Sheedy's performance in a sea of cliches and muddled relationships. It also makes Syd's sexual awakening the center of the story, then fails to develop the character with anything near the necessary depth. Everything about HIGH ART tells us we should understand Syd's ambition, her emptiness, her readiness to be part of Lucy's wasteland milieu, but Cholodenko assumes too much and shows too little. Even worse off is Gabriel Mann as Syd's stick-figure boyfriend, who exists entirely to give Syd someone to argue with. Like too many screenwriters, Cholodenko assumes that situation will carry the story, leaving us with characters whose relationsihps feel like plot devices. Though the seedy art-clique atmosphere adds a different dynamic, HIGH ART is still a formulaic film with little dramatic urgency. The urgency that does emerge comes entirely from Ally Sheedy, whose own awakening provides a far more fascinating story than the one Cholodenko wrote.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 personal bests: 5.
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