High Art
“High Art” depicts the encounter of Syd, a young woman who works as an assistant editor at a photography magazine and shares her flat with her boyfriend, and Lucy Berliner who once worked as a photographer but gave up on doing commercial work and lives with a drug-addicted German actress, Greta.
The chemistry between Syd and Lucy is sensible even at the beginning, so there isn’t any problem with the believability of their relationship. However, I thought that Syd’s relationship with her boyfriend isn’t dealt with very discreetly, in fact in contrast to Lucy’s relationship to Syd and Greta their relationship was written rather cheaply.
The end is abrupt and you could argue about if it is a good or a bad ending. When I saw it I was rather disappointed. It just felt so “trivial” to end this kind of movie like that even if it’s still a better ending than your average Hollywood finale. Plus, and even if the film may have tried to fool the viewer and therefore the ending is so “unexpected”, it just felt not contiguous to me. But maybe that’s the effect the director intended. Now, I’m not so sure anymore what to think of the conclusion.
Anyway: In the end it just didn’t really click. “High Art” is probably not a bad movie. Still, I couldn’t really get “into it”.
By the way: Two actresses I know from two of my favorite TV shows had a part in this movie: For one there is Patricia Clarkson who played Ruth Fisher’s younger sister Sarah O’Connor on “SIX FEET UNDER”. Next to Ally Sheedy she delivers the most memorable performance. And then there is - although only shown in three short scenes - Mercedes McNab as the receptionist who played Harmony in “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and in “Angel”. Oddly enough, she’s not mentioned in the credits.
6/10