As a filmmaker, Lisa Cholodenko seems most at home in bed. That is where many of her best, most intimate, most revealing scenes take place—not to mention the sexiest and the funniest. There are not many American filmmakers–independent or otherwise–that you can say this about. In her astonishingly confident first feature, High Art, the tightly-wound, heroin-snorting photographer played by Ally Sheedy takes the ambitious young photo editor played by Rhada Mitchell to bed for the first time—Mitchell has never had sex with a woman before–and the writing and directing of this scene are a marvel of fresh observation, trepidation and lust and love alternating with an honesty that puts most movie sex scenes to shame. Where most American filmmakers either get squeamish, lurid or generic in between the sheets, Cholodenko gets real.

Cholodenko’s three delicious features—High Art, Laurel Canyon and The Kids Are All Right–the first verging towards tragedy, the second in a seriocomic middle ground, and the third perfectly nailing its comic landing—combine wonderfully specific social observation, penetrating psychological insight, and a palpable sensuality that lights up all her work with an erotic glow. As a writer and director, she’s drawn to the theme and spectacle of seduction: Sheedy’s seduction of Mitchell is half the story of High Art, while Mitchell’s career-minded seduction of Sheedy forms the other half. In Laurel Canyon, (which begins in bed) Kate Beckinsale’s up-tight east coast scientific researcher falls under the sensual spell of Frances McDormand’s pot-smoking, hedonistic record producer (who also happens to be her potential mother in law), just as Beckinsale’s Type A boyfriend, played by Christian Bale, is sexually mesmerized by Natascha McElhone’s Israeli doctor (their hottest scene takes place in a car, never quite making it to bed). In The Kids are All Right, the marriage of Julianne Moore and Annette Bening (who get turned on watching gay male porn in bed together) is threatened by the amiably sexy Mark Ruffalo, who can’t help trying to seduce anyone in sight, whatever their sexual orientation. And Cholodenko seduces us at the same time with the warmth and understanding of her vision. That famous line from The Rules of the Game—“everyone has their reasons”—applies to the characters in Cholodenko’s deeply human films: their appetites may overwhelm their senses, but their creator never looks down on them for it.

Under her gaze, actors blossom. High Art not only resurrected Ally Sheedy, who won best actress from the National Society of Film Critics, it kickstarted the career of Patricia Clarkson, who gave an indelible performance as the drugged out, over the hill German diva Greta, a former Fassbinder star. McDormand was never more sensual or appealing than in Laurel Canyon, and the same could be said of Alessandro Nivola, who plays her much younger lover, a British rocker. And what recent screen marriage had a lived-in chemistry to equal that of Bening and Moore’s in The Kids are All Right? We can’t wait to see what sparks she’ll find in her next project, an HBO mini-series based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Olive Kitteridge, with McDormand, Richard Jenkins and Zoe Kazan.

It is with great pleasure that we welcome the trailblazing Lisa Cholodenko as Guest Director of the 2014 Los Angeles Film Festival.

David Ansen / Festival Artistic Director