High Art

Ally Sheedy plays Lucy with a sexy grime.

As well as its procession of downtown drug soirées, High Art offers one of the more sensitive on-screen depictions of lesbian sex in (relatively) mainstream cinema.

[Ally Sheedy's] excellent as Berliner.

High Art is often compelling and uncannily accurate in its evocation of downtown demi-monde characters and druggy, entropic milieu-the art in this film is high in more ways than one.

A highlight of the 1998 Sundance Festival: Cholodenko depicts with unwavering veracity the breakup of one longtime lesbian relationship just as another, unexpected one begins. The acting of the three women, Sheedy Mitchell, and Clarkson, is superb.

Strong performances by [a] supporting cast keep this film energized through its very last scene

Twenty-two years later, High Art...resonates simultaneously as a timeless meditation on love, loss and art and as a trenchant drama,

The film's treatment of women's sexuality is a nice contrast to the lesbian-bed-death clichés (and anti-chemistry) of Julianne Moore and Annette Bening in [Lisa] Cholodenko's more recent The Kids Are All Right.

Clarkson's Greta... is wickedly funny, while Mitchell's ingénue convincingly combines puppyish idealism and steely ambition. But it is Sheedy's Lucy, nonchalantly sexy, sharply intelligent, tough and vulnerable, who is the film's heart and soul.