The Nowhere Inn

As "The Nowhere Inn" (2020 release; 91 min.) opens, Annie Clark a/k/a St. Vincent is in the back of a stretch limo that is driving through the dessert. The limo driver tells Annie he has no idea who she is , "and I've driven a lot of celebrities!". At some point he stops the limo and abandons Annie in the middle of the dessert. We get some concert footage, and then Annie introduces her good friend Carrie Brownstein (Sleater-Kinney; Portlandia) and informs us that Carrie is going to make a documentary about Annie... At this point we are 10 min into the film.

Couple of comments: this movie is very much a labor of love from Annie Clark and Carrie Brownstein, who co-wrote and also co-produced this. The film's director is Bill Benz, best known for his work on that other Brownstein project, "Portlandia"). Please note: "The Nowhere Inn" is NOT a documentary, but a fictional film brought to us as if it were a documentary. It's a mix of concert footage, fictional scenes, and interviews, all of it served up in a big mix of weirdness and self-conscious art. Normally, I'd be totally up for this, but truth be told that in this particular case, it simply landed with a dud. It's not for a lack of trying. Clark and Brownstein play up the question of where Annie Clark ends and St. Vincent begins. "We are not so different, me and her" observes Annie at some point. Certainly the movie suffers because there really is no plot to speak of, raising the question: what is the point of this film? So that Annie/St. Vincent can let us have a glimpse as to who she really is? If that is the case, she failed miserably as I haven't anymore a clue now that I've seen this, as compared to before.

"The Nowhere Inn" was filmed 2 1/2 years ago, and premiered at the 2020 Sundance film Festival, yes, pre-pandemic. Now 20 months later, the film was released in select US theaters. Being the St. Vincent fan that I am (I saw her on her very first tour in 2007, when she opened for the National, it was simply St. Vincent and her electric guitar, no backup band), I just had to check it out. The Sunday early evening screening where I saw this at my local art-house theater here in Cincinnati turned out to be a private screening: I was literally the only person in the theater. I cannot imagine this will play much longer in theaters. If you are a St. Vincent fan, I'd readily suggest you check this out, be it in the theater (if you still can), on VOD, or eventually on DVD/Blu-ray, and draw your own conclusion.

The film has striking visuals, but that's about all the nice things I can say about it. There is no story. The film is basically a self-indulgent, narcissistic expression of "look at me, me me me me". If this film was made for the singer to promote herself, I'm afraid it didn't work. I'm actually put off by it.

This movie has a good first part, but in the second part it gets confusing.

The film starts well and a bit funny, it begins by criticizing the audience and that we always want to see something interesting on the person behind the artist, it also states that it is very difficult for us as humans to open ourselves emotionally. It also argues that it is not necessary for the audience to know everything about our favorite artists and that by wanting to know that, we can easily be fooled into creating an identity of the artist that is not the same as that of the human being behind it. But in the second half it loses its sense of what it means with the metaphors, it is not known if the main character is exaggerating things or is just pretending, because of this that character begins to get fed up with its sarcastic and exaggerated way of acting, It's hard to understand the tone of this movie. The story is not told in the best way, just as the ending is overwhelming since it shows that sometimes we are afraid of opening ourselves emotionally to others and that sometimes we do not want to know ourselves, but it does so in a very intense and very sudden way.

It is not understood if it wants to be a fake documentary, or if something like this really happened or if they just did nonsense things and built a very crazy and intense story, I did nos like it and I would not recommend it, but if you are a fan of the artist which it is about, you may like it.

Greetings again from the darkness. Have you ever wondered what would happen if David Lynch and Fred Armisen collaborated on a contemporary reimagining of THIS IS SPINAL TAP (1984)? Well, me neither, and that has not happened. But it's the closest I can come to giving you some idea of this meta-comedy concept film from director Bill Benz and co-writers and co-stars Carrie Brownstein and St Vincent.

We are told that initially singer-songwriter-musician St Vincent has asked her friend Carrie Brownstein to direct a documentary on the singer and her tour. Brownstein envisions a blend of concert and offstage footage so that fans get to know the "real" St Vincent. It turns out the real St Vincent is Annie Clark, a woman who plays Scrabble and video games, and loves to shop for radishes at local Farmers Markets. The contrast between St Vincent's onstage red guitar riffs, giant video screen, leather outfits and her offstage calm personality is not just stark, but actually a bit boring.

Boring is not what Brownstein has in mind and it creates a rift between the two women, and flips a switch for St Vincent. The musician goes overboard in trying to manufacture the typical rock star image of cool and aloof. Brownstein is frustrated not just with the artificiality of the new approach, but also in the expanding distance between the two friends. Some of the vignettes are quite humorous - in a surreal way. St Vincent stages an intimate scene in her bedroom with a scantily clad Dakota Johnson, and then another sequence features St Vincent's "family" in a scene right out of "Hee-Haw".

The satire on public vs private life is a topic worthy of discussion. Often it's the fans who feel entitled to know more about their icons, while other times it's the celebrities who are trying to cultivate a public image and garner some extra publicity. In this era of social media, the bigger the personality - the more outlandish - the more publicity and the more followers.

Director Benz's film drags a bit in the middle, and the final act turns somewhat surreal as Brownstein and St Vincent both have their lapses from reality. Both seem to be confused about their public persona vs real life, so it begins to mimic what's happened with the original documentary concept. There is a terrific scene involving St Vincent singing on stage and working her way through red velvet stage curtains, but for the most part this isn't a biting satire - it's more like a soft-touch. The "Portlandia" connection is clear throughout (Benz, Brownstein, St Vincent) but I'm not sure the film is cohesive enough (mockumentary? Wry comedy? Satire?) for a mass audience ... it might work best as midnight madness.

In theaters September 17, 2021.

I wanted to love The Nowhere Inn, because I'm a fan of Carrie Brownstein, and I like mockumentaries. This is more of a drug-addled, surrealistic reaction to the superficiality of celebrity, classism, and the reality of the fakeness of filmed reality. There's a lot of interpersonal cruelty between Annie & Brownstein which is frustrating & anxiety-inducing while it is couched in what feels like a nightmare. What I like about The Nowhere Inn is it's a reaction, one of disgust, which is appropriate. The objective of a mockumentary is to be satirical, sarcastic, comedic, and slightly absurd - and while there are a few really funny moments, the story gets buried under layers upon layers of mess. All said and done, I asked myself if viewers of The Nowhere Inn are supposed to feel like they were on the outside of an inside joke. That is where that film has left me.