‘Showing Up Review: Michelle Williams In Kelly Reichardts Latest Slice Of Americana
Editor's note: This review was originally published on May 27, following its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. The film's limited release begins Friday.
Kelly Reichardt has been doing minimal Americana since the early 1990s, mostly in Oregon, where she lives, and mostly in her favorite clothes; Quiet square pins that don't fit the round holes provided by the company. In this ongoing search, she has found many collaborators, but none more in keeping with her brand of recessive naturalism than Michelle Williams.
As a homeless woman trying to find her stolen dog in Wendy and Lucy, as part of a westbound caravan in Hacks Anti-West , and as one half of a married couple who finds the suspicious "home of their dreams". A certain woman . try to build n Williams lets his performances come across almost imperceptibly, just like Reichardt. Each character's drama, if you can call it that, lies beneath the surface.
In Reichardt's latest film, Showing , which is in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, Williams plays Lizzie, a middle-aged ceramic artist who makes ends meet by working in the office of an arts and crafts school. Her everyday life is a chaos of uncomfortably blurred boundaries. His father is a potter, now retired, whose reputation precedes him; his mother runs the office where he works, which can complicate relationships with staff; Her brother is a conspiracy theorist whose mother hopes he will agree to be the genius of the family, but he is more or less in her care. He keeps house costs down by renting a duplex apartment owned by another artist, Joel, who lives next door and is a landlord, colleague, and apparent friend.
That's another tricky combination, especially since Lizzie's hot water supply is full and Joel can't seem to get it right. "I told you you can take a shower with me." says the outgoing Joel, but Lizzie would probably rather wash in a sink for the rest of her life than go into Joel's bathroom with a towel. Of course she tolerates that, because making art is her priority.
Throughout the week you'll have a life-changing exhibit to keep an eye out for and a squadron of ceramic figurines to set ablaze and ignite. The job gives him time to attend to the essentials, while Joel's garage provides space. It's easy to see the parallel to Reichardt's career as he made the low-budget films that made him one of America's leading filmmakers while earning his living as a student teacher. It's about showing up on all fronts.
Williams can be seen carrying Lizzy into her apartment in a full skirt and stockings, thinking she's doing next to nothing, at least in terms of performance. Almost barometrically, Reichardt's characters register emotional changes, such as changes in air pressure. Lizzy is not talkative. When someone else at the arts center tries to undress her at lunch, she doesn't tell him to back off, but instead wraps herself around the sandwich she's eating as if to protect herself.
When she leaves Joel a yelling note about how upset she is about the constant lack of hot water, her anger seems staged; Joel certainly doesn't take it seriously. His deep frustration is really palpable in his adamant insistence on using the shower in unlikely places, like the gallery where his work is displayed.
That and the dove thing, a common bird that Joel finds after being shared by Lizzie's street cat. Joel places the pigeon in a crate, stating that he will rescue it healthy, then parks it with Lizzie, who is too embarrassed by her cat's misbehavior to give up. The dove lands everywhere with one or the other. lives in a studio, goes to the galleries, to the vet to the vet's surprise, and paces between his apartments, a living monument to the confusion of roles, responsibilities, and insults inherent in all life, but especially of women living it try free space to create creative work.
There's a lot of tedium in all of this, accentuated by the insanely repetitive soundtrack. While Meek's Cut-off and First Cow , Reichardt's last film, were the antithesis of the Western genre, which included epic themes, gunfights and a car falling off a cliff, Showing Up is about endless little acts of hardship. Very little happens.
Lizzie manages her job by isolating herself from others, including us. He doesn't want our company. By the end of the film, when his exhibit opens and he's worried about too much cheese on his snack plate, his armor will crack. That's not much, but it's enough for fans of Reichardt's internalized cinema.
Title: appears
Studio apartment: A24
Release date: April 7, 2023 (May 27, 2022, premiered in Cannes)
Directed by Kelly Reichardt
Screenwriters: John Raymond and Kelly Reichardt
Actors: Michelle Williams, Hong Chow, Marianne Plunkett, John Magaro, Andre Benjamin, James Le Gros, Judd Hirsch
Rating: r
Duration: 2 hours 7 minutes
