Showing Up finds director Kelly Reichardt operating in a slightly more casual mode, but it nonetheless remains successful thanks to a surprisingly funny script and two above-average performances from Michelle Williams and Hong Chau. Williams burrows into the deepest recesses of visual artists’ eternal struggle, and her vulnerability and anxieties are shown forth from her eyes at every turn (after all, the idea of broken dreams and struggle is very much the point here). It’s Chau, though, who ends up walking away with the film’s best moments, including a bit regarding one of the film’s other principle characters: a pigeon.