Producers: Julie Ansell, Judy Blume, Amy Brooks, James L. Brooks, Kelly Fremon Craig, Aldric La’auli Porter and Richard Sakai   Director: Kelly Fremon Craig   Screenplay: Kelly Fremon Craig   Cast: Rachel McAdams, Abby Ryder Fortson, Elle Graham, Benny Safdie, Echo Kellum, Kathy Bates, Amari Alexis Price, Katherine Kupferer, Kate MacCluggage, Aidan Wojtak-Hissong, Isol Young, Simms May, Landon Baxter, Zachary Brooks, Mia Dillon, Gary Houston and Wilbur Fitzgerald    Distributor: Lionsgate

Grade: B

Those for whom reading Judy Blume’s 1970 coming-of-age novel was a fondly-remembered rite of passage will appreciate that Kelly Fremon Craig and her collaborators have brought such taste and affection to its long hoped-for transition to the screen.  “Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret,” with its humorously frank treatment of a girl’s pre-adolescent anxieties, was considered rather provocative in its day.  Today, given the changing mores, the movie has something of the feel of a TV afterschool special or cheekily nostalgic sitcom, but when handled so lovingly it’s still enjoyable.

Abby Ryder Fortson is both suitably plain and pleasantly engaging as Margaret Simon, the twelve-year old compelled to move with her parents Barbara (Rachel McAdams) and Herb (Benny Safdie) from New York City to a New Jersey suburb when Herb gets a promotion.  She’s upset about leaving her beloved grandma Sylvia (Kathy Bates) and all her friends behind and scared at the thought of having to go to a new school.

But things actually work out pretty well pretty quickly in her new home.  Super-aggressive Nancy Wheeler (Elle Graham), who lives down the block and will also be starting sixth grade, invites her to be the fourth member in a secret club she’s starting with classmates Janie (Amari Alexis Price) and Gretchen (Katherine Kupferer).  And though Nancy’s brother Evan (Landon Baxter) heckles them, his buddy Moose (Aidan Wojtak-Hissong) is a nice kid Margaret’s soon infatuated with.  As an added bonus, her teacher Mr. Benedict (Echo Kellum) is a good guy.

But there are problems, too.  Class dweeb Norman Fisher (Simms May) shows interest in Margaret, and Nancy sets rules for the club—like not wearing socks—that can be irritating.  She also emphasizes the need to increase their breast sizes and wear bras, and the importance of having their first period.  And the group follows her lead in being catty toward some of their students, especially Laura (Isol Young), who’s more physically developed than they are and is rumored to be letting the handsome class lothario Philip Leroy (Zachary Brooks), whom they all swoon over, “feel her up.”  Meanwhile Barbara gets into difficulties of her own: wanting to fit in and help Margaret at school as well, she allows herself to get dragooned by Nancy’s primly bossy mother Jan (Kate MacCluggage) into all sorts of PTA duties, though she obviously pines to return to the art teaching she gave up with the move.

The other big question facing both mother and daughter has to do with religion.  Margaret’s parents decided to let her grow up without adhering either to Barbara’s Christian faith or Herb’s Judaism, deciding that she can choose what she believes for herself when she’s old enough.  Given the stress of the move, Margaret’s already started asking a nondenominational God for advice (thus the title), and when Mr. Benedict suggests that she investigate religions as her class project, it leads her to go to Temple when visiting proud Sylvia in New York and attending Christian services with Barbara and Janie back home; she even stumbles into a Catholic confessional at one point.    

But a serious crisis occurs when Barbara’s parents (Mia Dillon and Gary Houston connect with her for the first time in many years, having effectively disowned her for marrying a Jew, and come to New Jersey from Ohio, intending among other things to proselytize Margaret.  Hearing of their visit, Sylvia crashes the party with her friend Morris Binamin (Wilbur Fitzgerald), and all heck breaks loose.

All of this, and more, represents a year of serious learning for Margaret—about whom to trust and how to behave, about choosing wisely and not following others blindly, about treating other people with respect, and, of course, about becoming a woman, the “event” with which the movie ends.  It proves far less traumatic for her than it did for Carrie White, though of course Carrie’s mother was far less supportive than Barbara.

Craig secures an extremely likable performance from Fortson, and more than passable ones from all the younger members of the cast.  McAdams, freed from the stifling restraints of the “Dr. Strange” franchise, seems to be having a great time as the frazzled but loving mom, and though he has less to do, Safdie contributes a wonderfully laid-back turn.  Bates, of course, sparks matters up every time she appears (the Temple scene shows her at her best), while Kellum makes Benedict the sort of understanding teacher every kid would love to have.  Steve Saklad’s production design and Ann Roth’s costumes reflect the period ambience nicely on a medium-level budget (a subway sign advertising Ethel Merman in “Hello Dolly” pinpoints the action to 1970, the year of the book’s appearance), and Tim Ives’ cinematography is colorful in a sitcom sort of way; the picture moves nicely from incident to incident, thanks to editors Nick Moore and Oona Flaherty, and Hans Zimmer’s score is as jaunty as you’d expect.

Those unacquainted with Blume’s book may dismiss Craig’s movie as innocuous, lightweight coming-of-age fare.  But for those who love the book, it will be a special treat.    

Producers: Neil Kopp, Vincent Savino and Anish Savjani   Director: Kelly Reichardt   Screenplay: Jon Raymond and Kelly Reichardt   Cast: Michelle Williams, Hong Chau, Maryann Plunkett, John Magaro, André Benjamin, James Le Gros, Judd Hirsch, Heather Lawless, Matt Malloy, Amanda Plummer, Theo Taplitz, Orianna Milne, Lauren Lakis, Daniel Rodriguez, Jean-Luc Boucherot, Ted Rooney, Ben Coonley, Chase Hawkins and Izabel Mar     Distributor: A24

Grade: B

Perhaps there’s a bit of self-portraiture in Kelly Reichardt’s new film.  Reichardt makes small-scaled, acutely observed, deliberately paced pictures that attract critical attention but few viewers; the protagonist of “Showing Up,” Lizzy (Michelle Williams, a frequent collaborator), is something of her mirror image. She’s a Portland sculptor living in an insular artistic community (the film was shot at the Oregon College of Arts and Crafts) who’s doggedly putting the final touches on pieces for an upcoming gallery exhibition–finely crafted though rough-edged little statues of women in varied poses that are striking but unlikely to attract broad notice. (They’re the work of artist Cynthia Lahti.)  The picture is another skillful example of Reichardt’s minimalist style, but no likelier to appeal to a wide audience than her previous work (or Lizzy’s creations).

The writer-director has described her films as nothing more than glimpses of people going through their lives, and it’s a description that fits this one well.  Unassertive and rather mopey, Lizzy seems to brighten slightly when doing her art, yet responds with only meek protest when one of her statuettes gets overheated and discolored in the kiln run by perpetually upbeat Eric (André Benjamin), for whom every piece an artist brings him for treatment is “great.”  She lives with a cat that pretty much has the run of the apartment she rents from another artist, extrovert Jo (Hong Chau), who’s also preparing an upcoming show and exhibits no urgency about repairing Lizzy’s broken water heater.  One of our heroine’s main obsessions is finding a place to get a hot shower.

But another incident further interferes with her work.  A pigeon has been attacked by a cat, and Lizzy is enlisted by Jo in tending to the injured bird, even taking it to a vet.  It’s not the money, which the more successful Jo is willing to bear, that’s a bother; it’s the time the pigeon takes from Lizzy’s work, especially since she becomes attached to the pigeon and protective of it. 

Then there’s Lizzy’s family.  Her mother Jean (Maryann Plunkett), a brusque, businesslike woman, is Lizzy’s superior at the office of a small art magazine, and her gregarious father Bill, a potter separated from his wife, has allowed a wandering couple to decamp in his house; Lizzy thinks they’re freeloaders and is annoyed by the fact that he has happily welcomed them to stay indefinitely. 

More worrisome still is Lizzy’s older brother Sean (John Magaro), a troubled man who lives a reclusive life in an unkempt house.  Jean offhandedly calls Sean a genius, but Lizzy seriously doubts that when she finds him digging a huge hole in his backyard and describing it as a work of art.  As her show opens, Sean disappears, though both Jean and Bill seem less concerned than Lizzy, even as she tries to interest the small crowd that gathers in the tiny gallery in her work.  Amidst the modest hubbub, with Bill trying to connect with a couple of much younger women, Sean appears and begins wolfing down the cheese Lizzy’s put out for the guests, explaining that for him it’s dinner.  Meanwhile a couple of kids begin playing with the pigeon Jo’s brought with her and unwrap the bandages, letting it fly free.  It’s Sean who intervenes to catch and cradle it, and then release it into the street, in a gesture of liberation.

Though this ending will probably be embraced by viewers as somehow cathartic, it’s actually symptomatic of the most problematic part of the film. The subplot regarding the pigeon is inevitably rather cloying, just as a similar one about an injured bird restored to health was in the recent “Empire of Light.” And it’s apparently meant to reflect to some degree Lizzy’s hard-won expression of creativity, which is really the essence of the film.  It would arguably have been better had Reichardt avoided even the hint of mawkishness the whole endangered bird motif, with its allusions to both Lizzy’s tenacity and her fragility, represents and hewn more closely to the observation Sean, whether genius or not, makes, “You have to listen to what isn’t being said”–a practice Reichardt adhered to more exactingly in her previous films than she does in this one.

Yet “Showing Up” is extraordinarily successful in expressing, in its low-key way, the ambience of the community in which Lizzy is soldiering on—a group of artists and artisans determined to express themselves through their work, however little notice the outer world might give it.  (Indeed, many viewers might well see them as a smugly self-centered lot, happily inhabiting a protective bubble.)  Once again Williams, who has collaborated with Reichardt before, brings her most subtle instincts to the lead character, never breaking the mood even when Lizzy, in a rare moment of exasperation, confronts Jo about the water heater (only to retreat after being told off, though he does rip up a few of Jo’s flowers before retiring from the field).  The other members of the cast are similarly committed, with Magaro (who also worked with the director before, in “First Cow”) and Hirsch, obviously relishing another high in his octogenarian career renaissance, standing out, though Chau is effortlessly convincing in her matter-of-fact indifference to others’ opinions.

Technically the film evinces Reinhardt’s belief in simplicity, with Anthony Gasparro’s production design and April Napier’s costumes free of frills, as is Christopher Blauvelt’s cinematography and the lapidary editing by Reichardt herself.  Ethan Rose’s understated score features solo work from flautist Benjamin.

Kelly Reichardt’s neorealist style is an acquired taste, and many will find it too reticent, even sleepy.  But if you can tune into her wavelength, at its best the result will come across as quietly insightful and moving.