Movie Review: Showing Up

Showing Up is a quiet slice of life from the great Kelly Reichardt. Reichardt’s latest takes us into the world of the Portland art scene where we look at an artist’s preparation for her latest show and the stresses that she deals with in the week leading up to it. It’s a delicate, amusing, and surprisingly stressful film about the creative process and being an artist.

Michelle Williams, working with Reichardt for the fourth time, stars as Lizzy, a local Portland sculptor preparing for her latest show. Lizzy lives a quiet life. She lives alone with her cat and spends her days working on her sculptures or working at a local art foundation. Lizzy comes from a family of artists. Her mother (Maryanne Plunkett) runs the art foundation where she works. Her father (Judd Hirsch) is a fellow sculptor and lives alone, though he frequently has some freeloaders stop in and stay with him. And her brother, Sean (Joe Magaro), also lives alone and has some quirky ticks that make him socially awkward.

Stressed with trying to finish her sculptures and get her show ready while also dealing with her typical day-to-day life and family drama, Lizzy’s life gets stressed piled on her. She has no hot water in her apartment and when she brings it up to her landlord/neighbor, Jo (Hong Chau), another artist preparing for two shows, Jo shakes it off and continues to tell Lizzy that she will get to it eventually. Jo also thrusts the responsibility of taking care of an injured pigeon on Lizzy, though it was Lizzy’s cat that hurt the bird.

Reichardt immerses us in the artistic world of Portland, a world I am unfamiliar with, but one that intrigued me and captivated me throughout. It’s a small, diverse community of artists and creatives all working next to each other and with each other in the name of creativity. Reichardt showcases all the different types of art being created in this world, from Lizzy’s sculptures to Jo’s string work, to painting, acting, and movement, it is all represented in the film and it’s always interesting.

The creative world Reichardt created in Showing Up was fascinating and feels like a completely different world from the everyday norm that I am used to and what a lot of people will be used to. This world is filled with a lot of bland, boring colors, like a lot of white, gray, and taupe colors settings. Places like the art foundation where Lizzy works, the place she will have her show, and even cloudy Portland are dominated by neutral colors. But within all these bland settings, there is a small pop of color somewhere in the frame. Whether it’s Jo’s colorful string work in her white-walled gallery or the color in the art displayed on the taupe walls of the art foundation, or the brightly-colored cabinets at Lizzy’s father’s house, these colors add a layer to depth to each scene and to this world Reichardt has created. When we see the color, we see people being creative and working on their art, as if the color represents the creative spark. You can also look at these splashes of color as representative of how an artist perceives themselves. This is a small, niche world full of people who want to create beautiful, expressive art that is different from the norm, much like the small pieces of color on a large white wall.

But the colors don’t pop for Lizzy right away. Her apartment is bland, her office at the art foundation is bland, her clothing is bland, and even her personality, perfectly delivered by a marvelous Michelle Williams, is rather bland. We watch Lizzy work on her sculptures with gray clay and it feels like with all the distractions happening in her life, Lizzy is hitting a creative wall. That is until she puts her sculptures in a kiln at the foundation to dry out and the clay sculptures come out beautifully, with stunning color and form. The sculptures light up Lizzy’s world and show that this is where her artistic mind is and where her creative passions lie. It’s beautiful work from Reichardt that allows us to dive deeper into the artistic process and the artistic world.

In a cinematic landscape dominated by sequels, remakes, and familiar IP, Reichardt stands out as one of the great independent filmmakers working today. She is a splash of color in the overwhelmingly redundant movie world and Showing Up is continued proof of this.

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