Director Kelly Reichardt’s “Showing Up,” a vibrant and captivatingly funny portrait of art and craft, opens at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center Aug. 11.
Continuing is “Shortcomings.”
From the rising tensions of a make-or-break week of a Portland artist getting ready for a big show, filmmaker Kelly Reichardt carves a profound, gorgeously layered portrait of a woman that is as much about what makes up a life as it is about making art in “Showing Up.” Michelle Williams shimmers with complexity as Lizzy, who is trying to hold things together when they keep trying to fall apart. Her hot water heater is busted, her brother might be going off the rails, her divorced parents are exasperating in their own separate ways, she’s surrounded by free spirits at the arts college where she works, and all this lies just below the raw surface of the work that feeds her soul.
It is through Lizzy’s deeply relatable, often comical, everyday tribulations on her way to a longed-desired achievement that Showing Up becomes a quiet tour de force. Out of pressurized moments of absurdity and inspiration, out of crazy-making yet sustaining relationships, there emerges the beautiful, wondrously jagged shape of a person’s life.
“Showing Up” is rated R for brief graphic nudity, and is showing at the Ross through Aug. 24.
“Shortcomings” tells the story of Ben, a struggling filmmaker, who lives in Berkeley, Calif., with his girlfriend, Miko, and works for a local Asian American film festival. When he’s not managing an arthouse movie theater as his day job, Ben spends his time obsessing over unavailable blonde women, watching Criterion Collection DVDs, and eating in diners with his best friend Alice, a grad student with a serial dating habit. When Miko moves to New York for an internship, Ben is left to his own devices, and begins to explore what he thinks he might want.
“Shortcomings” is showing at the Ross through Aug. 17.
Learn more about the films, including show times and ticket availability.
