(Cannes) The modesty and daily worries of a contemporary plastic artist, who is about to exhibit her work: in Showing-upin competition at Cannes, the American Kelly Reichardt portrays without emphasis the days of anguish and doubt before a big deadline.
Posted yesterday at 2:30 p.m.
Lizzie (Michelle Williams), in her forties, neither poor nor rich, works in an arts school in Portland, run by her mother, and sculpts. As the opening of her exhibition approaches, when she has to finish her works, a lot of worries come to hinder her creative process.
Her starving cat, an injured pigeon she has to care for, a boiler that breaks down, and a depressed brother who worries her… Lizzie has to spend sleepless nights catching up on sculpting.
For the fourth time, Kelly Reichardt, very noticed in 2020 with First Cowspins Michelle Williams.
“It’s really a collaboration between us,” the director told AFP. “Even though the dialogues have been written, she wears a costume, etc., there is always something that happens with her that is really natural and surprising”.
Silent and worried, Lizzie seems physically affected by the problems that fall on her. “Michelle came out of this film changed and it was very interesting for me to see her transform,” added the director.
Intimate and without emphasis, emphasizing the small details of existence in a fairly closed circle of artists, Showing-up met with a rather shy reception in Cannes, where it was screened on the last day of competition on Friday.
Still a teacher, Kelly Reichardt insisted that she “loves giving lessons”, and while deeming the question of the place of women in cinema “relevant”, she admitted “not wanting to sulk about her pleasure and seem ungrateful” while she is living “a moment of grace” at 58 years old.
The previous week, she was presented with the Carrosse d’or during the Directors’ Fortnight, an award from the Society of Film Directors which “pays tribute to a filmmaker who has marked the history of cinema, through his audacity, his requirement and his intransigence in the staging”.