New York Film Festival 60 Screening 4

Showing Up (Kelly Reichardt) 

Reichardt regular Michelle Williams returns as Lizzy, a sculptor trying to navigate the jealousies and small victories in an artists' enclave in Portland, OR. She helps her mom with administrative work at the local art school. She grows increasingly frustrated at the lack of hot water in her apartment. But the landlord is herself a budding sculptor, one with more career momentum than Lizzy. Her possibly senile father is taking in possible freeloaders. And her "genius" brother shows signs of mental imbalance. 

One might expect Showing Up to result in a tense portrait of an artist on the verge of a nervous breakdown. But despite some very real problems in her life, Lizzy knows they're not insurmountable or apocalyptic enough to require a scorched-earth campaign of retribution. Often put upon but also kind and unassuming, she's just trying to exist as an artist however modestly. The film's title refers to Lizzy's ability to show up to her own life. Many welcome scenes patiently observe the labor of art, making the film a sisterly companion to Anne Truitt's Daybook: The Journal of an Artist. This is Reichardt's warmest, most open-hearted film, nowhere near as compelling as the pregnant silences of her masterpiece, Certain Women, but better upholstered than First Cow. I hope it proves her biggest hit to date. And if none of the above sounds compelling to you, know that the calmly paced story is put into a motion by Lizzy's bad cat Ricky.

Grade: A-minus