Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Kelly Reichardt
Starring: Michelle Williams, Hong Chau, Amanda Plummer, Judd Hirsch, Andre Benjamin
If you're allergic to bohemians you'll need a strong antihistamine to get
through Showing Up, writer/director Kelly Reichardt's fourth collaboration with
actress Michelle Williams. The film is set in the hipster capital
of North America, Portland, Oregon, and its characters live on tree lined
streets, wear dungarees and crocs, drink from jam jars and spend their
time working on various art pieces.
Williams' protagonist, Lizzy, doesn't get as much time to spend on the
latter as she would like. She's mere days away from putting on an
exhibition of the ceramic figures she crafts in the studio beneath her
apartment, but she's constantly disrupted. Her landlord, Jo (Hong Chau), is a fellow artist who lives next door and keeps fobbing off Lizzy
with excuses every time she asks when she might have hot water in her
apartment. Lizzy is busy with her day job at an arts college and needs all
her spare time to prepare for her show. Taking a day off, her plans
to get stuck into her work are ruined when Jo lumbers her with a wounded
pigeon.
The bird is an inconvenience to Lizzy, but she can't help but look after
it, taking time to bring it to a vet and running up a considerable bill in
the process. Lizzy has a similar relationship with her family, who get in
the way of her work, but whom she can't help but worry about. Her father
(Judd Hirsch) has a pair of aging hippy freeloaders (the very '90s
duo of Matt Molloy and Amanda Plummer) living indefinitely
on his couch. Her brother (John Magaro), who is considered the true
genius of the family, has mental health issues, and Lizzy worries he may
be a danger to himself.
The movie is set in the early summer, but Lizzy's demeanour is decidedly autumnal. While everyone around her wears shorts and t-shirts, Lizzy
dresses like she's the final girl in an October slasher movie. She walks
with a stoop as though she's always returning from a distant well with a
pail of water. The bags under her eyes are black like the warpaint of a
defeated soldier. You'd give her a hug if you didn't suspect it would make
her feel uncomfortable.
They say that Hell is other people. I wouldn't go that far, but relying
on others can often feel like purgatory. It's why being a teenager is so
frustrating, being unable to live an independent life even if your mind is
telling you you're capable of such a thing. If you're like Lizzy and pride
yourself on being organised, then the haphazard nature in which others
conduct themselves can prove immensely frustrating. It's a cliché that
creative people are chaotic. Some are indeed anarchic, like Jo and Lizzy's
brother, but most work to a routine, and when that routine is disrupted it
can feel like a violation of the social contract.
Perhaps because they make for more interesting biographical subjects,
chaotic artists tend to receive more attention than their more organised
counterparts. Watching Jo treat life like a pig treats a muddy puddle,
Lizzy probably feels like a victim of this injustice. "I didn't know you
had a show coming up," is a refrain Lizzy hears throughout the film. She's
unable to promote herself. I don't think it's because she doesn't believe
in herself, but because she doesn't believe she can rely on others to see
her worth. I imagine Reichardt, and many other women filmmakers, have felt
this way in their careers. In a perfect world, showing up and getting the
work done should trump any personality when it comes to the artists we
revere, but we live in a messy, chaotic, often inconvenient world that too
often buries talented introverts like Lizzy under a mound of others'
making.
Showing Up is on UK/ROI VOD from
January 15th.
