High Art · reception & legacy

1998 · Lisa Cholodenko

How High Art has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

A Sundance 1998 breakout praised mostly as an Ally Sheedy comeback vehicle, it has since grown into something bigger: a cornerstone of the 90s lesbian film canon, rediscovered by a generation of Letterboxd users tracing Cholodenko back from The Kids Are All Right.

What's debated

Fans still argue over whether its heroin-chic art-world milieu critiques the glamour of self-destruction or luxuriates in it — and whether the Syd–Lucy dynamic is a great romance or a cautionary power imbalance.

Its footprint

Patricia Clarkson's Greta — the imperious, perpetually nodding-off German actress forever invoking her days with Fassbinder — is the performance queer film Twitter and Letterboxd reviews can't stop quoting.

Where it stands

A 'you must have seen this' title on virtually every sapphic-cinema list, sitting alongside Bound and But I'm a Cheerleader as essential 90s lesbian film canon.

★ Did you know? Ally Sheedy, a decade past her Brat Pack fame, won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead for this role, and the film took the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at Sundance 1998 — a genuine career resurrection story.

Named by the director

Influences Lisa Cholodenko has publicly named — the director's own word, distinct from the inferred lines of influence.

Nan Goldin — Cholodenko has said Lucy's character and photographic world were drawn from Goldin's intimate, downtown-demimonde photography.