Directed by Kelly Reichardt
Written by Jon Raymond, Kelly Reichardt
Starring Michelle Williams, Hong Chau, John Magaro, Maryann Plunkett, Andre Benjamin, Judd Hirsch
Release Date April 7th, 2023
Published December 14th, 2023
The Great Catch Up of 2023 continues with Kelly Reichardt's festival favorite, Showing Up. Teamed with her muse, Michelle Williams, Reichardt crafts a portrait of loneliness, disconnection, and art that feels a little like Reichardt's take on Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielmann, a languid, observant, sometimes bleak comedy about a disconnected woman longing to be seen and cared for while also nursing a mostly combative relationship with most other human beings. For Williams' Lizzy, other people are mostly a functional element of life that she must navigate while trying not to be bothered.
Lizzy is an artist who crafts remarkable, fragile statues out of clay and fire and paint. Her work is abstract but painstaking. When she isn't making art in her garage, Lizzy also works as a secretary at an artist commune or art school, depending on how dismissive you want to be regarding art and artists. Lizzy got the job because her mother is in charge of the college and hired Lizzy as her top assistant. Lizzy does a good job while spending most of her time creating new ideas for her art.
This would normally where I would launch into a thumbnail sketch of the plot, spoiler free, of course. However, Showing Up is not a movie that lends itself to such an easy boiling down. Kelly Reichardt's film is very much a slice of a relatively mundane life. Lizzy has few friends and a troubled family but she spends most of her time alone making art and feeding her cat. The biggest incident of any average day for Lizzy is badgering her fellow artist and landlord, Jo (Hong Chau) to repair her hot water heater which hasn't worked in weeks.
