A droll, easygoing procession of slights, obstacles and microaggressions on the road to an artist’s gallery opening, “Showing Up” could be classified as co-writer and director Kelly Reichardt’s first comedy since her “Old Joy” 17 years ago. But labels are deceptive. There’s subterranean seriousness underneath the deadpan-comic surface here, and much of Reichardt’s previous work found plenty of quiet comedy and seemingly accidental lightness amid some pretty tough lives.
This one’s a portrait of low-level frustration, endured and finally, slightly dispelled. Set among some denizens of the Portland, Oregon, art community, filmed largely on the campus of the former Oregon College of Art and Craft (closed in 2019, reopened and reimagined for the movie), “Showing Up” offers moviegoers a paradoxical experience if they’re up for it. It is a serene, pulse-lowering charmer about Lizzy, a ceramic sculptor played by frequent Reichardt collaborator Michelle Williams, who herself is anything but serene or pulse-lowering.
Reichardt and her screenwriting partner, Jonathan Raymond, spend a few days in close, empathetic proximity to this defensive crouch of a character. Lizzy comes from a family of artists, habitually sidelined by her divorced parents (Maryann Plunkett and Judd Hirsch) who always considered Lizzy’s brother (John Magaro) the prodigy. Lizzy has a deadline to meet: As she hustles to complete her series of ceramic dancing, leaping women, life keeps throwing her curveballs.
Her cat, for example. The cat injures a pigeon, and Lizzy’s landlady Jo (Hong Chau of “The Menu” and “The Whale”), also an artist, also with a gallery opening coming up, decides to nurse the bird back to health. Lizzy keeps the identity of the culprit to herself, and with guilt nipping at her conscience, she takes over the caretaking, relocating the bird’s sickbed (a box, so sickbox is the word) to her garage studio.
Jo’s house sits on a leafy Portland street, which seems like a slice of heaven — but there’s no hot water in Lizzy’s flat, and Jo keeps putting off the repairs. “Showing Up” plays it cool with Lizzy’s simmering artistic envy regarding Jo, but “Showing Up” is more about Lizzy’s temperamental envy. How can this woman go through her days in such a blase, confident way? It’s a mystery to her. The kiln master (André Benjamin) at the school where Lizzy works, and Lizzy’s mother is an administrator, mentions Jo’s work as giving him “a lift.” At that point, Reichardt cuts away to a perfect reaction shot of Williams as Lizzy, ever so slightly seething.
We spend considerable time watching Lizzie create her ceramic figures, and “Showing Up” is all the better for taking that time. The movie has a tiny motor of a narrative, but it’s just enough. Nothing is overstated, and a lot of “Showing Up” isn’t even stated; it’s simply shown, on the fly or with the merest emphasis on what Lizzie goes through as she completes her work.
Reichardt is one of our most essential filmmakers; pick your movie (the recent and excellent “First Cow,” for example) and it’s likely to be a fine place to start if you’re new to her stories of those living on the edge, often very quietly. With “Showing Up,” she has made an unusually observant film about one woman’s artistic process, under everyday pressures she has a tendency to either bury or amplify. Williams is the ideal Reichardt collaborator. She wants us to understand what those pressures look, feel and act like.
The term “slow cinema” comes around fairly often in descriptions of Reichardt’s films, including this one. That phrase is off, though. When a filmmaker explores a storytelling rhythm that doesn’t jack you around or hit the expected dramatic beats, does that make it slow? Or simply patient? A movie feels slow only when nothing of visual, narrative or emotional interest is going on, and while many may respond to “Showing Up” by not showing up, or checking their phones mid-fidget, others will find an unassumingly beautiful portrait of one artist’s realization.
That realization is simple. Tuning out the world while you make your work doesn’t really work, in the end. You have to accommodate the world, and other people, and sometimes pigeons, and who knows? You might learn something while you make something else.
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'SHOWING UP'
3.5 stars (out of 4)
Rated: R (for brief graphic nudity)
Running time: 1:48
How to watch: Now in theaters
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