High Art

Recently restored to exquisite 4K, this psychosexual lesbian love triangle drama unfolds in the heady heroin-chic days of the 90s New York art scene. Radha Mitchell (Love and Other Catastrophes, MIFF 1996, 2022) stars as Syd, a bright-eyed art magazine assistant editor whose chance encounter with photographer Lucy Berliner (Ally Sheedy, The Breakfast Club), a famous but reclusive Nan Goldin type, leads to an intense affair that mixes business with pleasure. Syd seizes the opportunity to advance her career by bringing Lucy out of retirement, while Lucy sees Syd as a way out of her stagnant long-term relationship with former Fassbinder it girl Greta (Patricia Clarkson, The Party, MIFF 2017) and the heroin-addled daze that’s become their norm. This intoxicating ballad of sexual dependency was the debut feature of writer/director Lisa Cholodenko (The Kids Are All Right, MIFF 2010), whose script won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival. Sheedy received numerous accolades for her fierce and agonised performance as Lucy, while Clarkson is a scene-stealer as Lucy’s world-weary glamourpuss girlfriend. An essential addition to 90s New Queer Cinema with an iconic soundtrack by alt-rock band Shudder to Think, High Art is a richly textured and perceptive evocation of ambition, addiction and artist–muse relationship power struggles. “A stirring of pure, uncut desire … Cholodenko shows a dramatic grasp of the ways that romantic sexual yearning can get all jumbled up with ambition and addiction.” – Entertainment Weekly