Showing Up (2022) To BQ, it's a given that once you become a dedicated fan of a particular artist (be it actor, author, musician, comedian, etc.) you take the good with the bad.
True fandom means you realize that your fave's creative career will encounter both luminous highs and humiliating lows.
But you love 'em to pieces......meaning you show up for whatever they put out.....the diamonds and the dogs....
Michelle Williams belongs in BQ's Valhalla of gifted actresses......along with Anya Taylor Joy, Michelle Pfeiffer, Chloe Grace Moretz, Sally Field and the late Dame Diana Rigg, among others.
And that should provide ample explanation as to why we sat through "Showing Up", Williams most recent collaboration with independent writer-director Kelly Reichardt.
Reichardt's spare, dry quiet little minimalist little movies are meant only for the following......film critics, film festival culture vultures. the immediate families of anyone who worked on the film......and people like us, who'd watch Michelle Williams read the phone book for four hours.
For everybody who doesn't fall into those above mentioned categories, you're in for one tough slog. It will seem to you as if the movie's defying you to sit through it. You'll end up gaping at the screen wondering about all the more productive things you could've done instead of viewing 'Showing Up.
We can't really call it unwatchable, because for BQ, anything with Williams becomes automatically watchable, but for those who think Williams is just another actress among many, than this movie will make watching paint dry look like a far more exciting prospect.
Yet even as we endured the film, we found more than enough individual moments that made it, dare we way it.....entertaining.
Williams plays Lizzy, a sculptress from a family of artists, all of them clustered around an Oregon college of art. All the artists around her seem to happily and fully embrace a life devoted to creativity. This includes her father (Judd Hirsch), her tempestuous, unpredictable brother (John Magaro), and her only friend, an artist who's also Lizzy's annoying landlord who won't replace her broken water heater) (Hong Chao)
But unlike that outgoing bunch, Lizzy exists in her own self-contained, impenetrable bubble, solely devoted to crafting her ceramic figurines for her first upcoming gallery display. We know this right away, as Williams appears totally de-glamourized, like some exhausted, middle aged housewife who just sent her five kids off to school. She slowly shuffles about......the very act of walking seems to wear her out.
Hardly anything else to talk about......Lizzy and her landlord frenemy bond over caring for a wounded pigeon savaged by Lizzy's rambunctious cat. Her brother, on the very edge of his nerves, feverishly works on his latest opus.....an enormous hole he dug on his property. And Lizzy suffers with stoic gloom when one of her figurines is partially burned while in a kiln.
Need I go on? Again, I caution all BQ visitors to review the various categories as to whom this film would appeal to. You already know why we watched it......and if you're a huge Williams fan like us, than it's a worthy 2& 1/2 stars...(**1/2)
For everybody else? Extreme caution advised.
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