Michelle Williams just needs some hot water in the first Show­ing Up trailer

Just as every­one pre­pares to tie a final rib­bon on their per­son­al list of 2022’s top films, already the process of com­pil­ing a watch­list for 2023 has begun. Today brings the first look at what’s sure to be one of next year’s stand­outs, and with it a reminder that despite the del­uge of well-reviewed awards hors­es in the fall, the sup­posed dead zone of ear­ly spring also has a boun­ty of superb if less on-the-radar releases.

Kel­ly Reichardt​‘s new fea­ture Show­ing Up may have got­ten a pre­mière slot at the tail end of last year’s Cannes Film Fes­ti­val and cold-shoul­dered for any awards recog­ni­tion from the jury, but the uni­form­ly glow­ing reviews still marked the com­e­dy as one to watch while it await­ed a the­atri­cal run. With the trail­er uploaded by US dis­trib­u­tor A24 this morn­ing, the gen­er­al pub­lic can start to see why its feath­er-light sense of humor and deeply accu­rate low-stakes frus­tra­tions have already won over a fac­tion of ardent supporters.

Michelle Williams, star of such Reichardt films as Meek’s Cut­off and Wendy and Lucy, rejoins her trusty col­lab­o­ra­tor to por­tray artist Lizzy, a sculp­tor keep­ing her bills paid with work at a small arts col­lege in Ore­gon. As she pre­pares for a show of her work that she hopes will put her one step clos­er to suc­cess, she must con­tend with a dead­beat land­lord (Hong Chau) who won’t fix the hot water, her fam­i­ly of fel­low artists at var­i­ous degrees of eccen­tric­i­ty (includ­ing John Mag­a­ro and Judd Hirsch), the unex­pect­ed arrival of a cat she must care for, and a half-dozen oth­er lit­tle crises. From this sedate sort of chaos — in this chilled-out pock­et of the Pacif­ic North­west, per­am­bu­lat­ing about a field counts as a class — she finds inspi­ra­tion for her own vision.

At the Cannes bow, LWL’s own Caitlin Quin­lan praised the ​“lev­i­ty and inci­sive­ness” of Reichardt’s art-world satire. In her review, she wrote: ​“Show­ing Up is per­haps Reichardt’s fun­ni­est film to date, clos­est in tone and style to some­thing like Old Joy, her sec­ond fea­ture length, in its can­did sim­plic­i­ty and dry­ly com­ic mat­ter-of-fact­ness. It’s also per­haps the clos­est to being an auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal project in her oeu­vre, in the sense that Reichardt is both film­mak­er and teacher with­in a uni­ver­si­ty space and seems astute­ly aware here of the dynam­ic that per­vades such a lifestyle.”

Reichardt gets at the small indig­ni­ties in the life of a not-quite-starv­ing artist, one who must still lug her own equip­ment around and show­er at work and deal with the same inse­cure pet­ti­ness as any­one else in her field. The rare work about an artist not fram­ing the sub­ject as a genius, it’s a gem worth look­ing for­ward to as we sol­dier through the cold months to come.

Show­ing Up will come to cin­e­mas in the UK and US in 2023.