Showing Up

SHOWING UP   ***

Kelly Reichardt

2022

IDEA:  A sculptor in Portland, Oregon struggles to get ready for an exhibition while dealing with various personal obstacles.

BLURB:  The labor of art-making is largely humdrum, tediously routinized, and time-consuming, rendering it notoriously difficult to portray cinematically outside of the trope of creative genius. Making art is typically shown, hyperbolically, as a tortuously self-sacrificing and/or rapturous endeavor, and while both qualities exist in Showing Up, they’re more evident around the life of the artist – as influences, untapped potentials, or warning signs – than in it. For however passionate Lizzy might be about her work (something Reichardt and an impassive Michelle Williams refuse to clarify), she’s basically a drudge, going through the paces of an ordinary working-class existence that requires much more out of her than just her creative capacities. Showing Up empathetically portrays the unglamorous realities of being a common artist, focusing its attention on the everyday nuisances and economic exigencies that take precious time away from one’s craft, not to mention mental wellbeing. Reichardt and her co-writer Jon Raymond flirt with elements of farce and capitalist critique, but never quite commit to these expected paradigms; ever the understated dramatists, they prefer hushed, inductive, non-critical observation, with Christopher Blauvelt’s curious camera soaking up and multiplying little quotidian frustrations, joys, and breakthroughs. While this diffuse approach gives Showing Up less of a defined point-of-view than, say, Certain Women or First Cow, it also lends the film a pleasurably ambling quality that allows its characters room to breathe, and maybe even create something special when they least expect it.