HIGH ART (director: Lisa Cholodenko; screenwriter: Lisa Cholodenko; cinematographer: Tami Reiker; cast: Ally Sheedy (Lucy Berliner), Radha Mitchell (Syd), Patricia Clarkson (Greta), Gabriel Mann (James), Anh Duong (Dominique), David Thornton (Harry), Tammy Grimes (Lucy's mother), William Sage (Arnie), 1998)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
There was no visible difference between the characterization of a sleek photography magazine, Frame, that is the subject of the film, and the film itself, with all its glib characters provoking an air of chic fashion, all in the pretense of art. What makes this film mesmerizing, is not the plot, but the virtuoso performance of Lucy Berliner (Ally Sheedy), as a wily photographer, retired from her professional duties for the last ten years and living in a lesbian relationship with a has-been German actress, Greta (Clarkson). Lucy is able to find things within herself to show her jaded mood and her deeper artistic yearnings for something that is unattainable. It is a performance that makes the film seem greater than how it really is.
The less interesting story line involves the ambitions of an attractive, baby-faced assistant editor at the magazine, Syd (Radha Mitchell), who lives with a boyfriend (Mann) in an emotionally chilling relationship. A plumbing problem brings her upstairs and that is the ploy used to show how she meets the once famous photographer and her tired lover, who once worked with the German director Fassbinder as an actress before her demise through a heroin addiction. A sexual attraction develops between the photographer and her ambitious neighbor. The complications that arise out of this new relationship is the springboard for the plot.
Lisa Cholodenko's first feature is a sleek and soulful look at the relationship between the two women, who find that they are attracted to each other for various reasons, and it is also a look at the breaking up of another relationship that was once vibrant but is now deadened by the overuse of heroin and of a lingering ennui and self-pity that has set in. The ambitious Syd is taken in by Lucy's artistic skills and worldly manner, while Lucy is attracted to the beauty and youthful energy Syd has, and is not displeased with her ambitions. That Syd should change all her values on this chance encounter is possible but highly unlikely, but in the milieu of these urban hipsters, their relationship works out well. The two of them seem to have a chemistry together and their kissing scenes did give us a needed look into their passions, with the more controlling Lucy being in charge of things and instigating the relationship to be more sexual.
Patricia Clarkson contributed a sense of despair and a cagey ability for survival, as she reeks of being a sophisticated world travel. She is the jealous lover who senses her impending doom, who is hateful of this sycophantic upstart who has just entered her life. She has most of the lines in the film that pack a wallop. When introduced to Syd, she says in her heroin induced high state, which is where the film probably or should have derived its title of High Art from: "I live for Lucy- I mean, I live here with Lucy." The combo of the three women with different intentions and personalities, plays well, as the acting here is really fine. All the actors were properly ensconced in their roles and supported each other very well.
The look inside Syd's new power job (shown kow-towing to those above her, while putting on airs to those below her), where she was just promoted from being an intern, is a despairing look at the work scene she so much is enamored by; of her editor (Thornton), who is filled with cynicism and arrogance, and the boss of the place Dominique (Anh), whose opinion counts the most, as she is the one making the big decisions for the magazine. For Syd, to bring back Lucy to work and have her work be featured on the cover of the magazine, is her coup. It gives the story some tension as to how Lucy will be reconciled to this commercial venture, when she gave all this up because it was impossible for her to continue working at a straight job, and she just stopped showing up and dropped out of sight, though still taking portrait photos on her own.
Eventually the film, after being carried along by Sheedy's intense performance, dies an ungraceful death from too much of its slickness; it ran out of things to resolve other than by means of contrivance, and it was highly questionable that the "art" seen was really worthy of being deemed as something special. We just lost interest in the characters, the film began to look like a commercial for a magazine that wouldn't stop and get to the main article.
So what could have been cutting edge dramatics, if the lesbian romance was followed through further, turns out to be a film not about art, but more of a soap opera story, about how three women, at different stages of their life, get together and separate. All the pain that is there, is finally settled in the usual way sitcoms settle problems they don't want to handle any more. Which left the film only somewhat satisfying; it did create a proper atmosphere for us to view these lost characters, and it did have something to say about how their lives are being emotionally torn apart. But we only get a voyeurs look at them, and that is not enough of a look for us to say that we penetrated into their world of mind-games and drug induced delusions and need for each other. The film just looked too much like the slick magazine it presented in the film; that it wanted to say something more about Syd's sudden sexual reversal and about the despair in Lucy's life, but it just couldn't get it out what it wanted to say, which is why the film became a let down. Its style was, perhaps, too beautiful for its own good. It would have been wiser to develop more depth for the main characters and show them to be more than the superficial beings they seemed to be on screen. Being a talented photographer is not necessarily being a fully developed person, as evidenced by Lucy's dissolute lifestyle and poor decision making.
REVIEWED ON 8/4/99 GRADE: C+
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
ozus@sover.net
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