Erotic Movies: “High Art” (1998), Directed by Lisa Choledenko, Starring Ally Sheedy, Radha Mitchell, Patricia Clarkson (Queer Cinema, Lesbian)

Lisa Cholodenko’s stunning debut, which world premiered in competition at the Sundance Film Fest, rescued Ally Sheedy from Breakfast Club Brat Pack semi-obscurity.

High Art allowed Ally Sheedy to demonstrate a previously untapped range as Lucy, an edgy, once-famous photographer inspired by Nan Goldin.

Sheedy was Honored as Best Actress by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LAFCA).

My Indie Cinema Book:

Lesbian Romantic Triangle

A heated triangulation forms with her heroin-addicted, former Fassbinder-muse girlfriend Greta (Patricia Clarkson) and their downstairs neighbor, ambitious art magazine assistant editor Syd (Radha Mitchell), who drifts away from her boyfriend and into Lucy’s bed.

My Latest Book:

Gay Directors, Gay Films? By Emanuel Levy (Columbia University Press)

The love scenes represented breakthrough in lesbian screen representation, but Cholodenko is as alert to the psychic and emotional landscape as the sexuality.

The depiction of the druggy downtown New York demi-monde evokes Goldin’s landmark first collection, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency.