Review: 'Showing Up' is a dry comedy about artists who stress themselves out in the name of making art

Anyone who knows an artist is going to identify greatly with the characters in writer-director Kelly Reichert’s latest movie, “Showing Up” — a sly comedy about the self-assigned hell that is the act of creation.

Michelle Williams stars as Lizzy, a sculptor living in Portland, Ore., and a week or so away from her next gallery show. So, naturally, she’s a bit of a wreck. Her biggest problem is that there’s no hot water in her apartment, and her landlady, Jo (Hong Chau), another sculptor, also has an exhibition coming up, and hasn’t had time to get the water heater fixed.

One night, Lizzy hears some noise in her bathroom, and discovers that her cat has attacked a pigeon that got inside. Lizzy tries to dispose of the injured bird with a broom and dustpan, dumping it out her window — only to learn the next morning that Jo found the pigeon and is nursing it back to health. The fact that Lizzy ends up babysitting the bird becomes a running gag in the movie.

As Lizzy labors to shape her sculptures, glaze them and get them in the kiln, Reichert and her writing partner Jonathan Raymond introduce us to her wider circle. There’s her mom, Jean (Maryann Plunkett), who runs the local art college, which is always a beehive of creative energy. We meet her dad, Bill (Judd Hirsch), a potter who has a random couple (played by Amanda Plummer and Matt Malloy) hanging out in his house. And, importantly, there’s her younger brother Sean (John Magaro), who is dealing with some big issues. (It’s never stated, but the suggestion is that Sean is on the autism spectrum.)

But the central relationship in “Showing Up” is between Lizzy and Jo, whose contrasting personalities — Lizzy is closed off and tightly wound, Jo is free-spirited and outgoing — are reflected in their art. Lizzy’s clay figures (made by Portland artist Cynthia Lahti) are small and detailed, while Jo’s fiber works (created by New York-based artist Michelle Segre) fill whole rooms and are bursting with color. 

Williams and Chau give a pair of perfectly meshed performances, playing two friends who respect each other’s process while sometimes getting frustrated at the other — and themselves, to be honest — for putting art before everything else. There’s never envy or competitiveness, though, because their styles are so different. It’s refreshing to watch a movie that centers on such a grown-up, intelligent relationship between female friends.

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‘Showing Up’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, April 28, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for brief graphic nudity. Running time: 107 minutes.