Review: 'Showing Up' examines the very tiny details of art life
Michelle Williams and Kelly Reichardt are together again for their fourth pairing.
Kelly Reichardt's "Showing Up" moves slow. That's the point. It's about the act of creation as a means of expression, doing the thing and finishing the job, even if all it means is doing the thing and finishing the job. And then onto the next.
Michelle Williams plays Lizzy, a ceramics artist in Portland, Oregon's arts scene who, along with her "girls," the figurines she makes by hand, is getting ready for her next show. There's a chance an important figure with New York connections might make an appearance at her opening. But mostly we're dealing with the day-to-day beats of Lizzy's life, the minutiae of her world.
She lives in an apartment that doesn't have hot water, since her landlord Jo (Hong Chau), also an artist, isn't in any real hurry to fix the water heater. Lizzy, whose slumped shoulders are a stand-in for her attitude toward life, passive aggressively expresses her frustration over the situation by tearing out Jo's flower beds. Again, we're not exactly dealing with fireworks here.
When a pigeon flies into Lizzy's place and is wounded, Lizzy tries to get rid of it but winds up taking care of it anyway. It's kind of her lot in life. She's the daughter of a semi-successful sculptor (played by Judd Hirsch), and while she's not quite in his shadow, his success does loom over her in a way.
And so it goes. "Showing Up" is a movie where André Benjamin, aka Outkast's André 3000, plays flute and has a flute credit on the soundtrack. (He also appears as a happy-go-lucky kiln operator.) It's as low-key as low-key gets.
The movie marks Reichardt's fourth pairing with Williams, after "Wendy and Lucy," "Meek's Cutoff" and "Certain Women." The two clearly get each other and are on the same wavelength. In "Showing Up," their shorthand creates its own universe, and it's as insular as the world they're depicting. Outsiders will likely feel like they're showing up without an invite.
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'Showing Up'
GRADE: C
Rated R: for brief graphic nudity
Running time: 107 minutes
In theaters