113 min | PG-13 | May 29, 2020 | Focus Features
A burned-out music legend coasts on greatness tours and her overqualified assistant wants to produce. The assistant is right about the music and wrong about her place. The movie likes everyone too much to let that hurt.
Maggie Sherwoode is the personal assistant to Grace Davis, an aging superstar who fills arenas on hits she recorded decades ago. Maggie has a producer’s ear and no producer’s job. She wants Grace to make new music instead of accepting a Las Vegas residency that prints money and ends careers. The film sets up a clash between an artist’s legacy and an artist’s future. It is really about who gets permission to make art and who is told to stay in the support role.
Tracee Ellis Ross plays Grace Davis with imperious calm and buried fear. She knows exactly how the industry treats a Black woman past a certain age and she protects herself with control. Dakota Johnson plays Maggie with eager competence that keeps bumping against her own deference. The two actors are sharpest in the scenes where Grace tests Maggie and Maggie forgets to flinch. Kelvin Harrison Jr. plays David Cliff, a singer Maggie discovers, with easy warmth, and Ice Cube plays Grace’s manager Jack Robertson as a man who says no for a living.
Nisha Ganatra directs from a script by Flora Greeson, and the music is the strongest piece of craft. The film treats studio work as physical labor. It lingers on Maggie layering tracks, riding faders, and arguing about a vocal take, and those sessions carry more tension than the romance does. Ganatra shoots the Los Angeles industry in bright, comfortable light that matches the film’s reluctance to wound anyone. Greeson’s script builds real friction and then keeps reaching for the soft landing.
The High Note works best when it watches two women negotiate power they both pretend Maggie does not have. It works least when it remembers it is a romance and rushes to reassure the audience. The conflict between Grace’s caution and Maggie’s ambition is the real movie, and the film keeps stepping back from it. Ross gives the material more weight than it asks for. The result is a pleasant film about an industry the film is too fond of to indict.