High Art

If the mere mention of the word 'art' generally has you reaching for either the remote or the revolver, I'm with you all the way - and as movie premises go, it might seem that the tale of a bohemian New York photographer's struggle to retain her 'artistic integrity' is one best left to the poseurs.

High Art, however, is one of the exceptions that prove the rule - in spite of its subject matter, the film transpires to be a supremely affecting slice of punk-art cinema that is equally as truthful and passionate as the finest of French film.

Semi-forgotten '80s Bratpacker Ally Sheedy (best known for The Breakfast Club) makes a storming comeback in this determinedly low-key work. Downbeat and grimy, gritty but dazed, and somehow elegant beyond all imagination, the film is a moody, dimly-lit, junkie-chic Lower East Side love story, soaked in an enchantingly seedy style all of its own.

Sheedy plays a heroin-addicted, semi-retired photographer who slowly embarks on a lesbian affair with her new downstairs neighbour (Radha Mitchell) - while Sheedy introduces her to lesbianism and heroin abuse, the younger girl entices her into contemplating a career comeback. Mitchell's performance displays huge talent - her character starts off all flowery and fresh-faced before smack and love start to take their considerable toll on her youthful innocence, and Mitchell keeps pace superbly at every stage of the game.

Patricia Clarkson also steals the attention as a degenerate Nico-esque German who fights possessively to hold on to Sheedy's affections, stealing all her scenes and coming on like Garbo gone to seed, a sad and truly compelling sight.

In places, High Art is inevitably poisoned by some of the pretentiousness its title suggests: the characters actually use words like 'ethereal' 'subverted realism' 'naturalism' and 'deconstructed' in ordinary conversation (insofar as they engage in any ordinary conversation).

However, it is still nigh-impossible to resist - drug-drenched and tenderly romantic, the movie works its way towards one of the most intense, slowly-savoured and tangibly real love scenes witnessed on screen since Wings Of A Dove.

The film is definitely no fake - langorously soulful, and romantic in the harshest and truest sense of the word, High Art is a tragic, desolate and truly haunting work that impacts itself on the viewer's senses like very few films of its kind.