Movie Review: 'Showing Up'

Showing Up (2023)

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, star of four of Reichardt's films, Reichardt crafts a portrait of loneliness, disconnection, and art that feels a little like Reichardt's take on Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 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 be 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.

The closest incident that approaches a recognizable plot has Lizzy dealing with a wounded bird that flies through her apartment window. After seeming to have disposed of the pigeon, Jo finds it and invites Lizzy to help her nurse the bird back to health, unaware that Lizzy had abandoned the bird in their shared backyard. Naturally, a wounded bird turns out to be a perfect metaphor for Lizzy herself. In pain, emotionally, withdrawn from the world, and slowly healing from various competing emotional disabilities, Lizzy is a lot like this wounded bird, even if she can't see that for herself.

No comment is made by anyone comparing Lizzie and the bird, it's just my own interpretation and I think it makes sense. Showing Up, much like Jeanne Dielmann, is about giving the audience time to linger and observe the main character and let our mind open up and walk around in a life that resembles reality. Liking Lizzie or having her undergo the twists and turns of a more traditional movie plot are not the point. Showing Up is a perfect title, the movie shows up, unfolds before you, and gives you the chance to shape and interpret what the movie means to you and, especially what a life like Lizzie's means to you.

Having become a huge fan of Jeanne Dielmann, I am a rather perfect audience for a movie like Showing Up. It's a film tailor made for audiences weary of a traditional narrative structure and eager to embrace something outside the norm, that kind of movie we are spoon fed at the average multiplex every weekend. I'm not here to say that Showing Up is better than any mainstream feature just because it is different, rather it is just a terrific change of pace courtesy of a visionary director who has a very unique way of seeing and capturing the world. Kelly Reichardt does a wonderful job of capturing human stories and telling them in a less than typical or conventional way and if you like that sort of movie, Showing Up is for you.

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