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High Art
Lisa Cholodenko, director; with Ally Sheedy, Radha Mitchell, Patricia Clarkson, Gabriel Mann, William Sage, and Tammy Grimes.
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The plethora of gay films released over the past five years have-- with some exceptions (like Safe, or All Over Me)-- been mild, inoffensive, and aimed for the mainstream. They've avoided both the complications of being gay and lesbian, not to mention those of being human. High Art-- a new film about lesbians, dysfunctional relationships, the New York art scene, and heroin-- is refreshingly complex, funny, and intelligent.

Directed by Lisa Cholodenko, High Art' revolves around the efforts of Syd (Radha Mitchell), to be taken seriously. Syd is a young assistant editor at Frame, a swank New York art magazine. Presenting a high-tone wasp image and schooled in critical theory, Syd is eager to make a name for herself. But she's treated like an intern by senior editors Dominique (Anh Duong) and Harry (David Thornton). She is also berated by James (Gabriel Mann), her wannabe yuppie boyfriend, for either being too passive or too aggressive about her career. Syd accidentally discovers that her upstairs neighbor is famed no-longer-working photographer Lucy Berliner (Ally Sheedy), whose improvised, snap-shot-like work is highly praised, but who pissed off everyone in the art world when she fled to Berlin ten years earlier. Lucy lives with her lover Greta (Patricia Clarkson), and they are the center of a group of junkies who spend their time snorting and shooting heroin. Syd gets Lucy a gig at Frame, and they begin having an affair, which annoys both James and Greta. Then Lucy insists that Syd be her editor at the magazine, which pisses off Dominique and Harry. Syd gets confused about her sexual orientation and Lucy gets confused about her drug use and... well, it is very New York.

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Lisa Cholodenko's writing and directing is terrific. She has an ear for quirky, half-muttered dialogue and an eye for composition and color that's like great fashion photography on acid. Add to this a lethally funny sense of humor. While Cholodenko explicates the Syd-and-Lucy relationship with precision and warmth, she is mindful also of her minor characters. Greta is a magnificently destroyed beauty who appeared in a few Fassbinder films more than a decade ago, and is still trading on this small reputation. As inhabited by Patricia Clarkson, Grata is a grand monster who makes us (and sometimes even herself) laugh with her deluded bravado and pathetic attempts to pull her life together, all through a haze of skag. Tammy Grimes shines with Cholodenko's dialogue as Lucy's elegantly dismissive, Holocaust-surviving mother. Even in a tiny part, independent film performer William Sage crackles with scary wit as Arnie, a needle-friend of Greta and Lucy's.

High Art excels at portraying the complexity of the main character's erotic and professional relationships. Syd is sexually drawn to Lucy because of her fame and her boho life; she is so quickly seduced that she thinks nothing of snorting a line of junk on first meeting. She also needs Lucy to help her career and Lucy-- drawn to Syd's innocence and youth. The problem is that both Syd and Lucy are ambivalent about their careers, about drugs, and, well, about life. Lucy's lesbianism is both intrinsic to the story and completely beside the point. Cholodenko never portrays it as a heroic or superior choice, nor does she show Syd's decision to become involved in a lesbian relationship as a breakthrough.

It is not as though lesbianism is incidental to High Art-- it's intrinsic to the characters-- but it's not given undue moral or emotional weight. Liberal heterosexual critics have long maintained that "gay content"-- by which they mean the mere mention or presence of homosexuality-- should be inconsequential to a film. This sort of sexual-orientation-blind observation simply functions as a way to erase homosexuality. If it doesn't matter, why even have it there? Homosexuality has always been so weighted a topic in films that it's been forced to be either all bad-- or all good. The insistence by gay critics to have only "positive images" was a predictable reaction to the overabundance of images vilifying queers. It also lead to boring films and books. Notably, High Art treats drugs with the same attitude. They are neither condemned nor touted; they are interesting and dangerous, tempting and-- at times-- fun.

High Art is exactly that-- smart, beautifully written and performed and a Godsend in a middle of a mush of movies that may soothe but never stimulate.

Author Profile:  Michael Bronski
	Michael Bronski is the author of Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility and The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom. He writes frequently on sex, books, movies, and culture, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
	Email:	mabronski@aol.com