On the one hand, there's Jo (Hong Chau), her majestic installations that gallery owners are snapping up, her amazing ease in society, her long silky hair. On the other, Lizzy (Michelle Williams), her short haircut, her silent demeanor and her statues of colorful little good women who only interest a few "happy few". Director Kelly Reichardt places herself somewhere between these two characters in her new film, Showing Up (in theaters).
This child of the 1960s, a major figure in contemporary American independent cinema, is enjoying a success these days that would make all the Olympic Games in the world green with envy: after a Leopard of Honor at the Locarno Festival, she was entitled – l last year – to a complete retrospective at the Center Georges-Pompidou when his First Cow, a sumptuous reinvention of the western, was released on the screens.
“Do we really have to go through these comparisons? sighs the director in a Paris hotel the day after a preview attended by Isabelle Huppert and Catherine Deneuve, both absolute fans of her work. "I didn't want to do a self-portrait, she continues, but to talk about a woman artist at work, and how the everyday disrupts the creative life. Lizzy has a hot water problem, a cat acting up, a family whose problems never come at the right time… At the same time, she has an inner process around her art that she must preserve. »
The small ceramic statues of Lizzy are signed Cynthia Lahti, an artist from Portland (Oregon), the large installations of Jo are the work of Michelle Segre. "I wanted to film artists at work, sneak into the studio," explains the director. At first, I was working on a Canadian painter from the beginning of the century, Emily Carr, but after having made a short film for the Center Pompidou on the artist Michelle Segre, I wanted to anchor Showing Up in the contemporary world. and to leave Michelle Williams more free in her interpretation. »
Showing Up is arguably the pinnacle of the remarkable collaboration, begun in 2008 with Wendy and Lucy, between Kelly Reichardt and Michelle Williams – a protean actress, who just played Steven Spielberg's mother in The Fabelmans with magnificent emotionalism. Together, they manage to experience Lizzy's inner life while keeping her a part of mystery.
“Maybe there is still a bit of Lizzy in me after all, concedes Kelly Reichardt. After all, the movie was shot right outside my house! With that hint of self-mockery that makes Showing Up so tasty.
