Something to watch tonight: Monday 8 April

Showing Up (Reichardt, 2022)

Kelly Reichardt is one of our finest work­ing writer/directors. Michelle Williams is an act­or oper­at­ing at the very top of her game.

When they come togeth­er, we are very lucky indeed.

In Showing Up, Williams is a ceram­ics artist who is strug­gling to com­plete the amount of work needed for an upcom­ing exhib­i­tion. Obviously, her art doesn’t sup­port her because she is doing a frus­trat­ing admin job at her mother’s art school.

She is also dis­trac­ted by domest­ic mat­ters. Her apart­ment – sub­let from anoth­er artist played by Hong Chau – has no hot water. Her cat has injured a bird and she is nurs­ing it back to health because she feels so guilty. her fath­er (Judd Hirsch) has befriended some couch surfers and she is con­cerned they are tak­ing advant­age of him.

And her broth­er (John Magaro from First Cow and Past Lives) is suf­fer­ing from men­tal ill­ness and is dig­ging a hole in his back garden.

I reviewed Showing Up for RNZ’s At the Movies just before Christmas and loved it:

Showing Up is about being an artist and how inex­plic­able that impulse can be, even to your­self. That the com­pul­sion to make art isn’t a sign of men­tal ill­ness per se but that it is on a delu­sion­al spec­trum. At one point, the char­ac­ter Eric (played by André Benjamin from OutKast) talks for a snip­pet about “the flow” of cre­ativ­ity and how it takes him over.

Lizzy, unfor­tu­nately, finds it hard to reach that state because she is too frus­trated by the real world. Michelle Williams is a remark­able act­ress, get­ting bet­ter with every per­form­ance and every year. With Reichardt, she has the per­fect foil. Someone who wants to tell stor­ies and illu­min­ate char­ac­ter through the min­im­al­ist, onion skin lay­ers that a great act­or can offer you.

If you’ve seen any Kelly Reichardt before – Wendy and Lucy, Certain Women, First Cow – then this is a one hun­dred per­cent recommendation.

You can listen to the Showing Up seg­ment here, or the whole epis­ode (also fea­tur­ing Wonka and Chicken Run: Rise of the Nugget) here.

Where to watch Showing Up

Aotearoa and Australia Streaming on Netflix

Canada: Streaming on Hoopla

USA: Streaming on Fubo, Paramount+, Showtime and Hoopla

UK: Digital rent­al from Apple, Amazon, Google, YouTube or Rakuten

Further listening

Last Friday night Mark Leishman was sit­ting in for Emile Donovan on RNZ Nights and we chat­ted about Monkey Man, Tales from the Loop and relax­ing YouTube videos.