Product Details

• Actors: Radha Mitchell, Ally Sheedy, Patricia Clarkson, Gabriel Mann, Charis Michelsen
• Directors: Lisa Cholodenko
• Writers: Lisa Cholodenko
• Producers: Dolly Hall, Jeffrey Levy-Hinte, Lori E. Seid, Susan A. Stover
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English
• Subtitles: English, French, Spanish
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Studio: Universal Studios
• DVD Release Date: July 27, 2004
• Run Time: 101 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (74 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00023P4M4
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #6,557 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #16 in	Movies & TV > Drama > Gay & Lesbian
  #49 in	Movies & TV > Gay & Lesbian
  #58 in	Movies & TV > Art House & International > By Country > Canada

• For more information about "High Art" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Syd (Radha Mitchell) is an editor at a painfully pretentious art magazine; by chance, she becomes acquainted with lesbian photographer Lucy (Ally Sheedy) and her weirdo German girlfriend (Patricia Clarkson, in a strange Dietrich-like role). Syd becomes captivated with Lucy and her work and, smelling a career move, offers to feature her in the next issue of the magazine. The two become attracted, but their relationship is fraught with perils--Syd loses her rather square boyfriend, Lucy's girlfriend takes a hike, the avaricious management at the magazine pressures Syd, and, most importantly, the pair begins to travel down the road of heroin addiction. Besides the lesbian theme, High Art addresses such subtexts as what an artist will (or won't) be willing to do for recognition, and what price that recognition carries. High Art is a remarkably honest work, painful at times but understated and thoughtful. It does an excellent job of portraying the heroin-induced torpor of Lucy and her bohemian friends as they lie around and become consumed with the stuff. It's a cautionary tale, a sincere love story, a reflection on the nature of art, and a "lesbian film" for which the lesbianism is integral but not part of an overriding agenda. Sheedy is excellent, as is Mitchell in a very expressive role. It's far from being a feel-good movie, but High Art undeniably has some power behind it that will stick with you past the closing credits. --Jerry Renshaw

Product Description

A young woman falls in love with her neighbor a lesbian with a heroin-addicted girlfriend. Studio: Uni Dist Corp. (mca) Release Date: 02/08/2005 Starring: Ally Sheedy Patricia Clarkson Run time: 103 minutes Rating: R Director: Lisa Cholodenko

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The film strives to be an art form in itself, June 2, 2001

By	Linda Linguvic (New York City) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: High Art (VHS Tape)

I guess I've been culturally deprived. I never heard of Ally Sheedy before. I understand she was once part of a brat pack and did very different roles than this, but I have no other frame of reference. Anyway, in this ambitious modern tale, she plays the part of a lesbian photographer who's into drugs. She lives with her heroin-addicted girlfriend and has prematurely given up a promising career. They hang out in their seedy apartment doing drugs with a variety of other people and that seems to be the sum total of their lives. In the apartment below lives a young professional woman, Radha Mitchell, and her boyfriend. When there is a leak from the apartment above, the young woman goes upstairs and meets the photographer and her assorted friends. She works as an assistant editor for a photography magazine and is immediately drawn into the art of the photos as well as an attraction for Ally Sheedy and drugs.

One of the things I liked most about this video is what I thought of as its authenticity. There are several sex scenes that have the feel of real people in bed. If anything, they were so real that they went on a little too long but the reality of attraction, shyness, conversation, and exploration deepened the characterizations of the people involved. Perhaps this is the intention of the screenwriter, the long and lingering views of the relationship. There were also long and lingering views of drug taking and again I felt they were a little too much. The film though seemed to be trying to be an art form in itself and although the two star's performances were excellent, some of the minor characters just didn't quite seem real, such as Ally Sheedy's mother or the druggie girlfriend. The mood of the video is melancholy, the pace slow, the acting uneven. But for what it was, I enjoyed it.

25 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lesbo druggies exposed!, July 11, 2000

By	Dennis Littrell (SoCal) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

This review is from: High Art (VHS Tape)

Just kidding. Actually this is very good film whose only fault is a tendency to take itself a little too seriously at times.

Ally Sheedy plays Lucy, a lesbian photographer with a serious drug problem, but an even more serious inability to cope with the rapacious New York City commercial art scene. Lucy struts and poses her cocaine-trim limbs while her mind stoops to degeneracy. She is controlled by the deep-throated German has-been actress, Greta (Patricia Clarkson) her long-time lover, and by her own falling-down habits. The mercantile world is too much for her pure artist's nature, and so she forsakes it for the haze...

Radha Mitchell plays Syd, an assistant editor at Frame, a glitzy photo art mag, who is seduced by Lucy and by her own need to succeed. Gabriel Mann plays James, her boyfriend, who can see the handwriting on the wall, and splits.

Sheedy is outstanding and Mitchell is very good, but what makes this an intriguing and worth-while film is the uncompromising eye of Director Lisa Cholodenko, who depicts the sad, dreary NYC "high art" drug scene without a trace of sentimentality or any hidden sexist agenda. True, the women in the film are vastly more interesting than the men, who are merely passive appendages, of little notice. But that is because those in focus-Lucy, Syd and Greta-are strong people who shape their own lives, for better or for worse. Notice that the hangers-on, on the couch, male or female, are shallow and empty regardless of sex.

The lesbian sexuality displayed seemed authentic but somehow limited-although, how would I know? Maybe it's the code. The dependency passing for love between Lucy and Greta also struck me as real. Syd's loss of innocence was the main point, however, and it was not her sexual seduction that did it, but her discovery of her own very complex nature. The look on the face of the receptionist reading Dostoyevski after Syd appeared on the cover of the magazine, her hungry interest and then Syd's realization of being looked at in a different way, was just a marvelous piece of cinema incisively rendered.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In my top five films of all time for years!, May 25, 2007

By	Tim Streeter (The Great Northwest) - See all my reviews

I do not usually write reviews for titles I purchase from Amazon but, for this film I will make an exception. This did for Ally Sheedy what Pulp Fiction did for Travolta. More than that, it restored my faith in American Cinema. The three lead performances are simply sublime. The supporting acting and the direction combine to create a fascinating intimacy and wrenching emotional journey that I haven't experienced since "Sundays and Cybele". I could try to express why I think Ms. Sheedy's work is so remarkable but, the performance speaks for itself and is of a whole cloth. As Lucy tells Syd in the film, with a wry smile ..."I haven't been deconstructed in a long time" and I will do her the courtesy of refraining here - I only pray that there are other vehicles in Sheedy's future that allow her the same level of transformational self-expression that I felt this afforded her. If you haven't seen this yet DO IT NOW! Then insist everyone you ever met see it too! Lucy, Syd and Greta are characters that will stay with you in the best possible way, for a long time to come.