SHOWING UP - Mark Reviews Movies

Showing Up, A24

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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 6, 2023

Poor Lizzy (Michelle Williams) just wants to get some work finished, but maybe she's not a particularly tragic character, while most of the work could be done if simply stopped thinking her life is a tragedy. Such are some of the thoughts that might come to mind while watching Showing Up, which seems to be about a procrastinating, self-sabotaging mindset more than anything in terms of plot, characters, or creating an air of creative support and competition within an art school. Some will find Lizzy a bore, but more honest folks will probably recognize a bit too much in her for comfort.

Her life is a relatively easy one, considering the circumstances of her chosen career. Lizzy wants to be an artist—a sculptor, more specifically, although she dabbles in watercolors as a way to sketch the models and plan the striking colors of her sculpted figures.

Co-writer/director Kelly Reichardt's opening credits, which play as the camera observes those paintings hanging up within Lizzy's garage-based workshop, set the relaxed tone and rhythm of the story. It's a smart and, perhaps, subversively critical approach to Lizzy's tale, which, for her, is all about the difficulties and dramas and disasters that prevent her from working on pieces for an upcoming showcase of her work. As outside observers watching Lizzy whittle away day after day with errands and family visits and a cushy desk job at the school and spending her free time on those sculptures, we might start to believe Lizzy's real problem is that she has too much time on her hands, instead of, as she believes, the opposite.

What matters to this little story, written by the director and Jonathan Raymond, is how Lizzy feels, of course. As such, we will give her the benefit of the doubt, imagining that Reichardt is both sympathetic toward Lizzy's general plight, which seems more about her attitude than anything else, and aware that problems such as hers would be a source of envy for a good number of people. Williams plays the role in such hushed tones, which only rise to a mild yell once or twice when the character is really fed up with certain and completely understandable issues, and with such meekness that it's difficult not to feel bad for Lizzy from the outset—and even as we start to see how many of these problems are of her own making or of her way of thinking.

Take the story's big problem, which is such a trivial matter that one might need to read it twice to confirm that it actually is a significant piece of the minimal plot here. One night after working at the art school run by her mother Jean (Maryann Plunkett) and on her sculptures, Lizzy is awakened to some rustling in her apartment, which is owned and rented out on the cheap by her neighbor and fellow artist Jo (Hong Chau)—just to note the general comfort Lizzy has, despite Jo's postponement of replacing her tenant's hot water heater.

The noise is coming from a pigeon, which has made its way into the house and is being "played with" by Lizzy's cat. She rescues the bird from her pet, shovels the wounded thing into a dustpan, and drops it out the window. In the morning, Jo has found the pigeon and decided to nurse it back to health. Since Jo is so busy with a couple of gallery showings of her own art, couldn't Lizzy help to keep an eye on the bird, too?

In a way, the situation with the pigeon is of Lizzy's own making, which makes it a doubly funny hook for this story (The first part of the joke, obviously, is how relatively insignificant it is, which a few characters laugh about when they realize how much time and investment Lizzy puts into caring for the pigeon). How much of the rest of Lizzy's situation, then, is of her own design, too?

Her difficulty in finding time to work on her sculptures begins early, when her cat whines about needing food. Her trip to the store is a whole ordeal, apparently, eliminating the time she had scheduled to work, but that can't really be the case, unless Lizzy determines it to be true. After Lizzy leaves for the store, Reichardt includes what seems to be a throwaway shot of our protagonist sitting on the sidewalk and going through some trash, looking for something useful for herself or her art. Where's the urgency Lizzy apparently feels to sculpt when she's taking time out of her busy day for this improvised delay?

None of this is to say that Lizzy's attitude and behavior makes her any less sympathetic or that such is Reichardt's point in showing that side of the character. Indeed, it makes Lizzy more recognizable in certain ways and worthy of some real compassion as matters of her family come to light. Of particular note are the antagonistic relationship between her divorced parents—Jean, who works with her daughter every day and almost seems to take their relationship for granted, and Lizzy's father Bill (Judd Hirsch), a retired sculptor who's not great at communicating—and whatever's going on with her brother Sean (John Magaro). He's an artist, too, although his solitary life and clear issues with mental health make him the subject of regular worry, frustration, and, because of the attention he has received as the family's "genius," envy for Lizzy.

When life feels like a mess, everything looks like a crisis, and that's the state in which Lizzy finds herself. In little and quiet ways, Showing Up gives us a detailed and knowing sense of its main character.

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