A sculptor preparing to open a show must balance her creative life with the ongoing dramas of family and friends in Kelly Reichardt’s gentle, acutely observed portrait of the daily stresses and strains of artistic endeavour. Michelle Williams, in her fourth collaboration with the director, plays Lizzy, a Portland sculptor whose exhibition opens in a week’s time; anxious and irritable, Lizzy is hypersensitive to the minor nuisances that pull focus from her work, such as Jo (Hong Chau), a rival artist who has rented an apartment to Lizzy, and who repeatedly ignores her pleas to fix the plumbing. Add in divorced parents at loggerheads, a mentally ill brother, and a wounded pigeon, and it’s little wonder that Lizzie is in a state of emotional implosion. Showing Up is another of Reichardt’s perfectly formed miniatures, an entirely engrossing and satisfying exercise in understatement.

Notes by David O’Mahony