High Art

(Universal)

Director Lisa Cholodenko confronts some complex issues in this story of a young, squeaky-clean assistant editor (Radha Mitchell) at a chi-chi Manhattan photography magazine who drifts into a shaky love and business relationship with her upstairs neighbor (Ally Sheedy), a former photography phenom. Sheedy transforms the cliché of the suffering artist into flesh-and-blood pathos, and Mitchell's character deepens enough to redeem somewhat the film's pat, melo-dramatic climax.