1314 High Art

[domino harvey]

In a revelatory performance, Ally Sheedy stars in writer-director Lisa Cholodenko’s debut feature, a wry and incisive look at the politics of the New York art scene wrapped in the guise of an emotionally spiky queer romance. When Lucy Berliner (Sheedy), a once prominent photographer who has retreated into a life of heroin abuse with her faded-actress lover (Patricia Clarkson), is rediscovered by Syd (Radha Mitchell), an up-and-coming editor at a photography magazine, professional ambition and personal attraction become dangerously entwined. Stripping away art-world glamour to tell a seductive yet troubling story of complicated human connection, High Art stands as an essential work of both queer and 1990s independent cinema.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Lisa Cholodenko, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
Audio commentary from 2004 featuring Cholodenko
New conversation between Cholodenko and filmmaker Karyn Kusama
New interviews with actors Ally Sheedy and Radha Mitchell and photographer JoJo Whilden
Dinner Party (1997), a short film by Cholodenko
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: An essay by critic B. Ruby Rich

New cover by Anthony Gerace featuring photography by JoJo Whilden

[domino harvey]

My write up from the Women Directors List Project

High Art (Lisa Cholodenko 1998)
Art magazine editor Radha Mitchell falls for lapsed photographer Ally Sheedy and insinuates herself into Sheedy’s world of drugged-out hipsters. This has been on my To Watch list for the last twenty years, but now that I’ve finally seen it, I’m not sure why this film merited the inflated praise it garnered on release. All I see is a collection of unrelatable and unlikable characters stuck in an obvious and false schematic narrative that ends the same way lesbian romances had been ending for decades. Hard to believe snorting heroin with your neighbor may have consequences, I know, but here we are…

[The Narrator Returns]

I didn’t love this when I saw it five years ago but I’m excited to revisit with this release. This and Laurel Canyon, whatever their problems (the latter is a real mixed bag for how everything involving Christian Bale is a total zero), really capture how nascent passion and queerness emerge from what seems like circling the drain; no comment on the supposed “unrelatability” of these characters. Both are a lot better than what Cholodenko got her Oscars attention from.

[Lowry_Sam]

I really enjoyed Laurel Canyon and would have expected it (or The Kids Are Alright) first. This one didn't live up to the hype for me when it came out, but I'll revisit if it pops up on the channel.

[The Curious Sofa]

How can you not at least appreciate Patrica Clarkson as a fallen Fassbinder diva? After wife and girlfriend roles in mainstream movies, this is the part which got her noticed and her career turned a lot more interesting.
About the characters being unlikeable, having spent a day with the real-life person Ally Sheedy's character is based on, I'd say that, as a portrait, it was positively flattering. Junkies are just about the least fun people I have known.
I really liked the movie when it came out and am looking forward to revisiting it. I didn't care that much for Cholodenko's later films, though she did great work on HBOs Olive Kitteridge, maybe my favourite mini-series of all time.

[Matt]

Patty Clarkson is indeed the best thing about this.