Which is why it’s odd to me that I’m unable to root for them as a couple. There’s a couple of problems there:
- Syd is definitely using Lucy for her career.
- Lucy is definitely using Syd’s adoration like methadone.
- But most importantly, their faces just don’t seem to want to go together.
That night in the cabin, they get wine drunk (always with the substances, Lisa) and consummate their long-simmering attraction. But Syd freezes up and kind of can’t stop crying?
She says it’s because she’s overcome by the intensity of her feelings for Lucy, and I think there was a time when I watched this movie and believed her. But this last time—in a roomful of queer women who had assembled to watch the movie—I felt like she was crying because she was forcing herself to do something she didn’t really want to do. Plenty of women in that room had a different read on that scene, and I honestly think that ambiguity is one of the film’s greatest strengths.
When Lucy and Syd get back to the city, they vow to make a go of their relationship (poor Gabriel Mann goes to stay with a friend) but Lucy throws a wrench into the whole love/fame plan when she reveals that her brand new photo collection is all about Syd!
And Syd did want to be famous and successful, but now the whole art world will know she slept her way to the top after all. Of course, in an even more brutal twist, no one judges her at all, since they fucked or lied or manipulated their way to the top too! NO ONE IS SINCERE, AND EVERYONE IS ADDICTED TO SOMETHING. God, these problems make me nostalgic for 1998. Remember American Beauty? Everyone was like, “Ugh, we’re so rich, and it’s so boring.” What a time it was.
Before she can make her big mistake from her glamorous yet poisonous lifestyle, Lucy agrees to one more bender and roll in the hay with Greta, but it turns out to be the one that kills her. Unlike most other queer movies, her death is not the tragic punishment for her gayness, but the grim justice for her weakness.
The movie ends with the secretary from the beginning being like “Lol well if you didn’t see that my reading The Idiot was foreshadowing on futility, that’s really your problem.”
So all in all, High Art is one of the strongest members of our canon. It raises more questions than it answers, and it is both gorgeous and unsettling. Though I am still unclear in my own heart whether Lisa Cholodenko is forcing us to examine uncomfortable truths in our community or she is just repelled by the idea of a happy lesbian.
The Breakdown
- Sex Scenes: One
- Quality of Sex Scenes: I think it was the first one, in college, where I was like “well they’re both hot but this is not doing it for me.”
- Moral of Story: Don’t believe in things. Don’t not believe in things either. But DEFINITELY do not (ever) do heroin.
- How Many Times Have You Watched it, Elaine?: I don’t know, man. It’s all a haze.
Next week: We’re going to be snowed in so it’s the perfect time to commit to all three chapters of our most glorious and beloved Tipping The Velvet.
