Film reviews: Polite Society and Showing Up
Polite Society
Writer/director Nida Manzoor's frisky feature feels destined to be compared to other movies—a little bit Everything Everywhere All At Once, a little bit Scott Pilgrim vs. the World—but that would be missing out on what's uniquely fun and culturally specific about its worldview. Ria (Priya Kansara) and Lena Khan (Ritu Arya) are British-Pakistani sisters each with unconventional career goals—Ria as a stuntwoman, Lena as a visual artist—that helps unite them. But when Lena unexpectedly ends up engaged to wealthy Salim (Akshay Khanna), Ria starts to suspect that something sinister is afoot. Manzoor mixes up plenty of genre sensibilities, drawing martial-arts epics, Bollywood musical, caper comedy and more, all while remaining committed to well-crafted jokes. At the same time, she's exploring the familial expectations for Pakistani young women, both through Ria's need to have a partner in outside-the-norm dreams and through the evolving arc of Salim's mother (Ms. Marvel's Nimra Bucha, again perfectly capturing comic-book melodrama). It's not particularly spectacular at nailing its genre elements, with fight sequences that are more functional than inspired, and a bit of slackness in the pacing. With such solid character dynamics, though—and a thoroughly winning lead performance by Kansara—you wind up with 100 minutes of solid smiles and an entertaining delivery system for conveying a generational shift in gendered expectations. Available April 28 in theaters. (R)
Showing Up
Over her 30-year career as a filmmaker, Kelly Reichardt has chosen to make movies that speak in a whisper, whether her subject was old friends on a camping trip or radical environmentalists plotting sabotage. Here, she applies her restrained approach beautifully to a character study of Lizzy Carr (Michelle Williams), a sculptor in Oregon whose preparations for her first big solo show are interrupted by a variety of distractions, from a lack of hot water to an injured pigeon to the mental-health issues of her brother (John Magaro). Reichardt and her long-time writing collaborator Jon Raymond are interested in providing a comprehensive picture of how hard it is to be a working artist, including the reality that Lizzy needs to work at a day job, doing clerical work at the arts college where her mother (Maryann Plunkett) is an administrator. But Williams—in her fourth collaboration with Reichardt—fleshes out that idea effortlessly, suggesting the mix of emotions involved as Lizzy's landlord/kind-of-friend Jo (Hong Chau) seems to be finding greater success with her own artwork, and how even being part of a family of artists and art-lovers can feel like its own unique kind of pressure. The film's title may or may not be connected to the Woody Allen-attributed quote that "90 percent of life is just showing up," but Showing Up does capture with warmth and wit how even that part isn't as easy as it seems. Available April 28 in theaters. (NR)
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