Showing Up

Kelly Reichardt: Showing Up (US 2022) starring Michelle Williams.

2022

Animals / Feel-Good / Festival Hit / Humour / Female Stories / Art

Theme: United States of Indie

Country: United States

Director: Kelly Reichardt

Screenplay: Jonathan Raymond, Kelly Reichardt

Starring: Michelle Williams, John Magaro, Hong Chau, André Benjamin

Production: Neil Kopp, Vincent Savino, Anish Savjani / Imperative Entertainment

Duration: 107 min

Rating: K12

Maxim 1, Love & Anarchy: Helsinki International Film Festival (HIFF), 18 Sep 2023

Anton Vanha-Majamaa (HIFF 2023): " Useimpien taiteilijoiden työ ei ole neroutta ja jumalaisen inspiraation kanavointia, vaan arkisen syklistä grindausta. Ensin tehdään taidetta. Sitten pykätään näyttely, painetaan avajaiskutsut, otetaan vastaan latteudet hienosta värien käytöstä ja todetaan, ettei “läpimurto” vieläkään tapahtunut. Sitten palataan sorvin ääreen. "

" Työ tapahtuu Maslow’n tarvehierarkian ylimmällä askeleella, mutta sitä määrittävät kaikkein perimmäisimmät tarpeet: Miten elätän itseni? Mistä saan aikaa taiteelleni? Kuka korjaisi suihkuni termostaatin? "

" Showing Upin päähenkilö Lizzy (Michelle Williams) on kuvanveistäjä, joka suunnittelee elääkseen pamfletteja äitinsä pyörittämälle taidekoululle. Kun Lizzy saa hoidettavakseen kissansa satuttaman kyyhkyn, on arjessa yhtäkkiä yksi muuttuja liikaa. "

" Cannesin kilpasarjassa esitetty komedia on Kelly Reichardtin omakuva. Ylistetty ohjaaja tekee hienoja pieniä elokuvia aiheista, joita on vaikea pukea myyviksi hissipuheiksi. Sapluunalla ei koskaan nousta seuraavaksi Scorseseksi, ja siksi Reichardt joutuu opettamaan päivätyökseen elokuvakoulussa. "

" Ehkä juuri omakohtaisuus tekee Showing Upista Reichardtin uran hauskimman elokuvan. Luottonäyttelijä Michelle Williams on pääroolissa ilmiömäisen hyvä. " Anton Vanha-Majamaa

Quoted by HIFF 2023: " More than once in Showing Up, her wry and wonderful new movie, the director Kelly Reichardt gives us something that feels rarer than it should in American cinema: a lingering moment in the presence of an artist at work. Not a famous writer pounding self-consciously away at a typewriter, cranking out page after page of voice-over-excerpted masterpiece; not a genius tackling a blank canvas that will, a few scenes later, be a gorgeous finished painting. Lizzy (Michelle Williams), the artist we’re following, is a Portland-based sculptor of limited means, modest aspirations and no particular reputation. " Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

" Showing Up takes place over the course of a week, and to say that not much happens in it would be at once true, totally inaccurate, and a description of the film’s strangely engrossing micro slice-of-life beauty. Not much happens beyond Lizzy’s day-to-day travails — unless, that is, you count the things that do happen as expressions of the drama of life. Michelle Williams plays Lizzy in a wavy mop of brown hair, with a slight frown, so that her whole demeanor seems repressed and a bit frumpy. But Williams (…) is a magician of an actor — or maybe, in her own way, a sculptor too. " Owen Gleiberman, Variety

Language: English

Distribution: Park Circus

Print source: Park Circus

Cinematography: Christopher Blauvelt

Editing: Kelly Reichardt

Music: Ethan Rose

Sound: Daniel Timmons

Production design: Anthony Gasparro

Costume design: April Napier

Make-up: Morgan Muta, Kameron Gates

AA: The credit sequence of Kelly Reichardt's Showing Up consists of a cycle of watercolours on the wall of the artist Lizzy (Michelle Williams) who is busy preparing an exhibition of her sculptures, the vernissage of which is forthcoming in a week.

The movie itself is an impressionistic vision resembling a series of watercolours. The form of the work is flow-of-life. It is an anti-drama, belonging to the school of epiphany. Everyday details add up and when the vernissage is opened in the finale, we are also invited and feel like friends of Lizzy's family, friends, colleagues and neighbours.

As Lizzy, Michelle Williams expands her scope and portrays a character who is more laid back and focused on her inner world than usually, Even in such a withdrawn mode, she is the sunny center of everything.

The central image ia a pigeon wounded by Lizzy's cat, tenderly bandaged but set free by children during the vernissage.

The sky is the limit.