Showing Up Is Kelly Reichardt’s Tender Ode to Creative Insecurity

Two years after her affecting First Cow hit theaters, Kelly Reichardt doesn’t stray from the Pacific Northwest setting where four of her other films take place. This time, she trades 17th century Oregon County for the present-day Oregon College of Art and Craft in Portland, where her exasperated lead, Lizzie (Michelle Williams), works as a day job. When she’s not working, Lizzie is crafting uncanny, rigid portraits of women in disjointed poses, whether in watercolor on paper or in tangible clay, the latter of which being the medium she’s chosen to showcase in an upcoming show. But before Lizzie can arrive at her big day, she has to navigate a whirlwind of chaos: Her dysfunctional family; the contentious relationship with her landlord, neighbor and fellow artist, Jo (Hong Chau); and a poor, injured pigeon that her cat, Ricky, tormented one night.

In her fourth collaboration with Reichardt, Williams is better than ever. Possibly overdone in beleaguered, regular-woman makeup this time around, Williams still best showcases just how lived-in of an actress she can be in Reichardt’s work. Every sigh she utters feels pulled down by weights, her slouch hurts to look at; her exhaustion bounces off the screen and infects the audience like an illness. And in spite of how done-up she is in order not to look like an actress, it is primarily in the physicality of her performance and the candor of her dialogue that she is believable as Lizzie, struggling artist. There is never a moment where Michelle Williams slips through the performance. But she’s also surprisingly droll, with Reichardt and co-writer Jonathan Raymond penning a number of lines made comic in Williams’ perfect deadpan. Lizzie strikes as the new apex of Williams and Reichardt’s consistently fruitful relationship, each installment since 2008’s Wendy and Lucy another rung reached in which the two have further hewn the synchronicity between artist and muse.

Like Lizzie’s patchy figures, Reichardt’s camera fixates on obscured body parts and jerky zooms as it follows Lizzie working towards her opening night amidst a near-comical string of setbacks. First, her hot water is still off. It’s a weeks-long issue habitually, if unsurprisingly, ignored by Jo, with Hong Chau being a totally effortless fit for Reichardt’s naturalist world. Jo is well-meaning, but flitty, unreliable and a little phony. Chiefly, she is engaged with the impending opening of her own art show—a bigger, more expansive show than Lizzie’s. Which is why Lizzie ultimately takes over primary care of the injured pigeon that Jo found the morning after Lizzie stuffed it out her apartment window, never admitting accessory to this crime. But now Lizzie has this ailing pigeon in her custody, on top of her landlord’s flakiness, on top of her worrying about her father (Judd Hirsch) taking in a freeloading couple (Amanda Plummer and Matt Malloy) she suspects is taking advantage of him. And there’s also her brother, Sean (John Magaro), troubled, mentally unwell, but a “genius” according to her doting mother (Maryann Plunkett), and who is digging holes in his backyard. And Lizzie still has her deadlines to meet.