London Film Festival: High Art

High Art (dir Lisa Cholodenko, starring Ally Sheedy and Radha Mitchell)

Breaking down the banal stereotypes of gay filmmaking isn't easy. One person who has just proved it can be done is Lisa Cholodenko, a Milos Forman protegee who has produced a stunning first feature, a meditation on the camera as an instrument of seduction, exposure and death. Newcomer Aussie Radha Mitchell (yes, another Neighbours cast-off) plays Syd, the 24-year-old assistant editor of a fictional but horribly realistic New York photography magazine called Frame. Belittled by her whippet-like boyfriend and patronised by her ponytailed bosses at the magazine, Syd stumbles on her big break when she discovers that a famous, reclusive photographer, Lucy Berliner (Sheedy), happens to be her next-door neighbour. On the cusp of sexual affair, Berliner consents to a Faustian pact to shoot the magazine's next cover just as her German girlfriend Greta (an awesomely raddled Patricia Clarkson) goes on a jealous drug bender. Actually, everyone in the film is waif-like, even the men, and the coked-out parties, deracinated workplaces and the grimy fenestrations of all the loft livings make an appropriate backdrop through which the characters flit like ghosts. Ally Sheedy's career comeback is assured by her performance here as the skinny, nihilistic photographer. This is immensely sophisticated, intelligent, sexy film-making that breaks all the rules.