Cannes Review: Michelle Williams in Kelly Reichardt’s “Showing Up”

Kelly Reichardt has been making minimalist America since the early 1990s, primarily in the state of Oregon, where she lives, and mostly in her favorite awkward detachment: silent square pens that don’t fit society. In this ongoing search she found many employees, but like Michelle Williams, none came close to her recessive naturalism.

Like a homeless woman trying to find her stolen dog Wendy and Lucy, As part of a westbound caravan in the counter-west mild court, And like half of a married couple trying to build their dubious “dream house”. a certain womann, Williams lets his performances succeed almost imperceptibly, which is very similar to Richard’s path. The drama of each character, if we can call it that, is on the surface.

In the last Reichardt, ScreenWilliams, who competed at the Cannes Film Festival, plays Lizzie, a middle-aged potter who she hires while working in the office of the School of Arts and Crafts. Her daily life is a shell of awkwardly blurred boundaries. Her father is Methuselah, now retired, whose fame precedes him; Her mother runs the office where she works, which can complicate relationships with employees; Her brother is a conspiracy theorist, her mother expects him to admit that he is a genius in the family, but that he is more or less entrusted to her. She supports the living expenses by renting an apartment in a duplex owned by another artist, Joel, who lives next door and is both a landlord, colleague and imaginary friend.

This is another tricky combination, especially since Liz’s hot water service is overflowing and Joel clearly can’t fix it. “I told you: you can take a shower with me!” She tells Joel outgoing, but Lizzie probably would rather bathe in a bowl for the rest of her life than dance in Joel’s towel. She bears it, of course, because creating art is her priority.

He has a show for a week that has stood out – it could change his life – and a team of ceramic figurines to glaze me and tear me apart. The job gives him time to do his real work, while Joel’s garage gives him space. It’s easy to draw parallels to Richard’s career with the shoe films he made, which made him one of America’s foremost directors, while he also taught college students. It is a real show, on all fronts.

Williams can be seen as Lizzie in flounced socks and skirts walks into her apartment and thinks she’s doing nothing, at least in terms of acting. Reichardt’s characters register emotional changes almost barometrically such as a change in air pressure. Lizzie doesn’t speak. When someone at the art center tries to invite him for lunch, she doesn’t tell him to back off, but instead wraps his body around the sandwich he’s eating as if to avoid it.

When he leaves Joel with a screaming message about how angry he is at the constant lack of hot water, his anger is enacted; Joel doesn’t take it seriously. It’s his insistence on using the shower in questionable places, for example in a gallery where his works are on display to really make you feel his repressed resentment.

This is the case with the dove, a completely normal bird that Joel finds after Liz’s mischievous cat is half destroyed. Joel puts the pigeon in the box and says he is restoring it to health, then stops it with Lizzie, who is too embarrassed by her cat’s bad behavior to refuse. The extremes of the pigeon go everywhere with one or the other; He lives in the studio, wanders through the galleries, with the vet – much to his surprise – and back and forth between his apartments, a living monument to the confusion of roles, responsibilities and pain that unites everyone in life, especially in life. Women looking to make room for creative work.

There is a bit of fatigue in all of this, evidenced by the insanely repetitive scores. Where is it court of myths Y the first cowReichardt’s latest film was a counterpoint to the western genre, featuring epic themes, gunshots and a chariot falling off a cliff. Screen These are infinite and tiny actions. Very little happens.

Lizzie shapes her workplace with respect to others, including us, by shutting herself down. She doesn’t want our company. Only at the end of the film, when the exhibit of him opens and he worries about too much cheese on a serving plate, maybe a shell in his armor opens. It’s not much, but for Reichardt’s internalized viewers, it’s enough.