"Showing Up" a low-key, dryly amusing slice-of-artist-life from Kelly Reichardt

Showing Up (2023)

Indie filmmaker Kelly Reichardt makes movies one way: quiet, stripped-down, observant, and truthful about life in all of its slow pauses and silences. “Showing Up” continues her collaboration with actor Michelle Williams (2016's "Certain Women") for the fourth time, and for viewers who might make this their first Reichardt film, it could feel a little like watching paint dry. With that said, it’s kind of appropriate, considering the film is about narcissistic artists and that relatable feeling of life getting in the way of their creative outlet.

Portland sculpture artist Lizzie (Williams) has so much work to do, but life’s obstacles and distractions keep interrupting. She works her days in the administration office at an art school, run by her mother (Maryann Plunkett), but the deadline for her show is quickly approaching. Her neighbor and landlord Jo (Hong Chau) is a fellow artist; Lizzie keeps reminding Jo to fix the water heater, but Jo has her own art opening to worry about. Amidst these competing artists and their passive-aggression, Lizzie wakes up to find her orange tabby cat nearly mauling a pigeon. Lizzie sets the bird free, but then Jo ends up rescuing the same pigeon, wrapping its broken wing and placing it in a shoe box, and asking Lizzie to watch it. How can Lizzie focus on her own work if she keeps showing up for everyone else?

To have more on Lizzie’s plate, she worries about her dad (Judd Hirsch), who has a free-spirited couple (Amanda Plummer, Matt Malloy) freeloading at his place. And then there’s Jo’s brother Sean (John Magaro), a recluse struggling with his mental health. In a different (and more obvious) kind of film, Lizzie would slowly lose her mind and then snap, going postal on everyone who’s frustrating her. The level of narrative urgency in Kelly Reichardt and co-writer Jon Raymond’s screenplay is whether or not Lizzie will be ready in time for her art show, and whether or not Lizzie’s hot water will get turned back on. That business with the wounded pigeon also could have come off like a cloyingly heavy-handed metaphor, but Reichardt handles it with a light touch and finds a perfectly hopeful payoff. 

Kelly Reichardt likes to watch, observing people and every mundanity in their everyday lives. To one viewer, nothing happens in “Showing Up,” and it will be too slow. To another viewer, everything happens, even if most of it is underneath the surface, and it’s unhurried. Michelle Williams could just show up and find fascinating, subtle layers in Lizzie, but she does much more than that. Decidedly de-glammed in Crocs and a jean skirt, Williams is very lived-in here. She’s frumpy and prickly without being affected or overly quirky. The wonderful Hong Chau makes a great foil as Jo, and the supporting cast is exceptional, right down to André Benjamin as the art school’s kiln operator. Specific in its human behavioral aims but uncomfortably universal, “Showing Up” is a film that rewards your patience if you're able to give over to its subtle blend of dry, spiky humor and melancholy. Before all of the summer blockbusters start showing up, this is a low-key treat.

Grade: B

A24 released “Showing Up” (108 min.) in select theaters on April 7, 2023, followed by a wider release on April 14, 2023.