Cannes 2022, remote notes

[Chris Knipp]

MAY 27, CANNES DAY 11: KELLY REICHARDT'S FOURTH COLLABORATION WITH MICHELLE WILLIAMS


MICHELLE WILLIAMS IN SHOWING UP

SHOWING UP (Kelly Reichardt)
Cannes. In Competition. Features Michelle Williams as a sculptor assembling a gallery show in the "outsidery-y" artistic community of contemporary Portland, Oregon in what Rodrigo Perez in The Playlist thinks "one of Reichardt’s most playful, warm, sweet, and funny works," and another of her oblique statements about political and emotional survival in America. Variety points to this as the best with Williams since WENDY AND LUCY (of four collaborations). In The Guardian, Bradshaw is not so entranced (3/5 stars) and finds SHOWING UP "downbeat but diverting" and sees the action as "torpid," the dialogue as "murmured." He finds this film "a bit studied and passionless" especially compared with the previous one, the (I think) very subtle and touching FIRST COW. David Rooney in Hollywood Reporter would disagree: he calls this "a gorgeous reflection on making art," an " unpolished jewel of a film." The warmth of FIRST COW has lingered, and I'll want to see this new movie, whose milieu sounds close to home.