High Art

REVIEW
Faulty plumbing in a Soho walk-up leads to a chance encounter between an ambitious assistant editor at a photography magazine and a once-prominent photographer, back in New York after a decade in Berlin. As the photographer Lucy, Sheedy is a glistening, jagged edge in an almost sonambulent environment, snorting smack with her ex-Fassbinder-actress lover and other denizens of her free-falling coterie. Mitchell, as the newly minted assistant editor Syd, is luminous and arresting as she tests her wings in the turbulence of the casual duplicities and reflexive back-stabbings of the artistically evolved. Syd and Lucy develop a true bond; but it is no match for the realities of the world they inhabit. Director Cholodenko stays one step back in observation, utilizing subtle, sharply etched performances; allowing the viewer to glimpse personal histories through fragments of conversation and telling glances. Syd receives first-hand experience of art and artist as disposable products for mass consumption. High art, indeed.