High Art

In the 1990s for feminist cultural studies programs and lesbianism went together like a horse and carriage and Columbia U Film School graduate Lisa Cholodenko's debut film is unintentionally as good a showcase for its inward-looking limitations as you're ever likely to want.

The art scene is the backdrop when Syd (Radha Mitchell), an assistant editor on a New York photography magazine meets Lucy (Ally Sheedy), a once-lauded photographer who has opted out of the high-pressured world of galleries and magazine spreads for a life of drug abuse and sapphic love with her German ex-actress girlfriend (Patricia Clarkson).

The story of the relationship between the three women unfolds predictably and laboriously, fairly quickly foundering in its chi-chi pretensions. The film premiered at Sundance where it picked up a scriptwriting award for Cholodenko, presumably for the amount of pointedly self-important dialogue that gets uttered. Radha Mitchell is quite engaging as the androgynously-named Syd and the director knows how to make a good-looking film, but as for one that transcends its Zeitgeist hipness and gets to the heart of things, forget about it.

 

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