Movie Review
High Art( 1998)
Movie Review
Duration: 1hr 41mins IMDB Rating: 6.7 / 10 Released: 1998 Written and Directed: Lisa Cholodenko
Making her debut through HIGH ART, Lisa Cholodenko, more or less, gives the audience what the trailer promises. The trailer commits Ambition, Seduction, Sacrifice and other career moves which the movie fulfils to a great extent. Lisa’ s career hasn’ t been much productive as she directed just four films in all, though, her debut movie won 7 awards and made it to 18 nominations. Let’ s have a look at its storyline and review the cast, crew and the message of the movie.
Story: High Art is about an assistant editor Syd who is an ambitious woman. The movie is about Syd’ s discovery of her sexuality: from living with her boyfriend to her falling in love with a lesbian photographer Lucy Berliner. Lucy Berliner stopped working 10 years ago and lives with her German girlfriend Greta. Syd revives Lucy from her hibernating period and persuades her to work for FRAME, the company Syd works for. Lucy agrees to it. It is while working on the cover for FRAME do these two women discover their love for each other. High Art is not just about love, seduction and ambition, but also about drugs, addiction and lot more.
Review: Featuring Radha Mitchell as Syd and Ally Sheddy as Lucy Berliner, High Art is a romantic drama portraying a lesbian’ s sexuality, relationships, ambition, addiction and what not. Syd is a career driven enthusiastic woman who is trying to find appreciation in her job. She meets Lucy Berliner who is a retired photographer living upstairs. Syd seems to be bored of her life and her relationships and Lucy is already lost. Lucy’ s life is a mess as well. She lives with her lover Greta who is a washed out German actress. Both of them are heroin addicts, especially Greta who rarely is in her senses. At one hand, Greta’ s words reveal her love for Lucy, but, on the other hand, they reveal her lost state of mind as well:“ I’ m Greta. I live for Lucy. I mean I live here with Lucy.” Greta become jealous of Lucy’ s friendly relationship with Syd and loses control. She even puts her life at risk. Likewise, Syd’ s boyfriend James is critical of Lucy and is afraid of Syd getting laid with her.
Lucy, on the other hand, starts getting attracted to Syd. On their weekend trip, they get intimate with each other and Syd confesses her love for Lucy. Lucy seizes their intimacy and Syd’ s beauty in a photograph and offers the same to Syd for the cover she was doing for FRAME. Syd is afraid at first, to make her personal life public, but, later on submits Lucy’ s work to her boss Dominique. She receives a lot of admiration at work. Lucy, on the other hand is tensed with her situation with Greta and then her addiction. She decides to move out.
Lucy’ s mother walks away from her when she tells her about her situation. She says,“ I have a drug problem and a love issue. Or maybe, I have a love problem and a drug issue. I don’ t know.” In her weak moment, she surrenders her inner-self to her mother, but, her mother walks away. Apparently, it seems she had a drug problem and a love issue, after all.
High Art highlights lesbian intimacy and seduction along with drug addiction, through the intimacy does not have much of nudity. Rated 6.7 by IMDb, the movie was provided with“ R” certificate and below seventeen kids were allowed only under a parental supervision. The movie did well on the silver screen but could have been a little more relatable to the audience had it been that Syd’ s character was a little more refined.
The characters, overall, were fine and the story brought out a new concept in its time. Greta’ s character was well-portrayed as she represented drug-addiction in the best way possible. Her addiction makes her forget things and lose track of time. All in all, Lisa’ s Greta is what the younger generation needs to learn from.
Meenal Singh meenal @ chiiz. com Meenal Singh is an undergraduate student of Miranda House, University of Delhi. She aspires to be a lecturer in English Literature. Meenal wishes to fight for the equality of women worldwide through the power of her words.
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