The cinema outings of the week with Thierry Fiorile and Matteu Maestracci: “Showing Up” by Kelly Reichardt and “Our ceremonies” by Simon Rieth.
Show-Up by Kelly Reichardt, a highly autobiographical film, is the filmmaker’s fourth collaboration with actress Michelle Williams. A beautiful complicity between a radical director, who films the margins of America, but who prefers wandering to the imposed figures of independent cinema, and an actress who alternates blockbusters, Venomclassy films, with Steven Spielberg or Todd Haynes, and therefore Kelly Reichardt.
In Showing Up, Michelle Williams is Lizzie, a doubting sculptor, a teacher at an art school run by her mother, sister to a supposedly genius but very restless brother, and tenant of another booming artist, who prefers to prepare his exposed than taking care of his colleague’s water heater.
Pangs of creation, pettiness, jealousy, Kelly Reichardt enjoys the thankless part of the artist’s life and, a rarity for her, dares to be humorous. No makeup, grumbling, hanging out in Crocs with white socks, Michelle Williams is a formidable alter ego of Kelly Reichardt.
Our ceremonies by Simon Rieth
The young director Simon Rieth, who had already made an impression with his short films, confirms all his qualities here. It is the story of two brothers, Tony and Noé, who we see playing on rocks by the sea near Royan, at the start of the film. But after an accident, the eldest dies, or so we believe, since he comes back to life, and a leap in time makes us find the two brothers, now aged in their twenties, who come to bury their father. .
As you will have understood, we are both in the intimate family chronicle, the transition to adulthood, and a tale with supernatural and fantastic trappings. Not insignificant detail, the two actors who play the older main characters, are two non-professional actors, Simon and Raymond Baur, brothers in life, champions of wushu, a Chinese martial art. Two first roles of Asian origin in a French film, it’s rare.