Mark Reviews Movies: THE NOWHERE INN

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 16, 2021

Annie Clark is boring. When she becomes her professional and stage persona St. Vincent, though, nobody can stop paying attention to her. That becomes a conundrum for Annie's friend Carrie Brownstein, an actor and budding director, who wants a documentary about Annie/St. Vincent to be her first foray into serious, artistic filmmaking.

That's the basic premise of The Nowhere Inn, which stars Clark (as well as her alter ego, for that matter and with increasing significance) and Brownstein as versions of themselves. The movie itself exists as the making of this documentary, with pieces of it staged within the format of a behind-the-scenes look at Clark's regular life, other bits staged as a narrative of Annie and Carrie debating what the documentary we're partially watching should be, and actual concert footage of St. Vincent, shot—on grainy and dirty film—with some care and craft.

It's a lot more straightforward than that description may make it sound, as long as one can keep track of when Clark is supposed to be "Clark" or "Annie" or "St. Vincent." At a certain point, we're not supposed to be able to distinguish those personas, because Clark/Annie/St. Vincent has lost track of that, understanding, too.

The movie itself—as in the narrative surrounding the phony documentary—was directed by Bill Benz, who gets a good amount of mileage from the early premise of Brownstein and Clark's screenplay. One doesn't need to know who Clark or St. Vincent is, and indeed, her relatively obscure fame as a niche and experimental musician is a running joke through most of this story.

It opens with Annie being driven in a limo along a stretch of desert highway. Her driver confesses to—actually, makes a bit of a show about—not knowing who she is. A phone call to the driver's son doesn't help, and he's more annoyed that she swears while singing one of her songs to the kid than in not learning the answer to the mystery of her celebrity.

The other joke is that there isn't much excitement or intrigue to Annie when she isn't on stage. Carrie learns that quickly, when Annie spends some time before a show just playing a portable video game. A couple of bandmates suggest that the most interesting thing about Annie is her music, which frustrates Carrie during attempted interviews, because that fact will be seen during the concert footage.

Carrie needs some kind of hook, if her documentary about the singer's private and professional lives is going to achieve anything. Maybe, the filmmaker suggests to her friend, Annie could be a bit more like her stage persona when she isn't on stage. That little suggestion sends Annie into a spiral—first, of self-doubt and, later, of inflating ego.

Initially, the result is fascinating—since Annie already is and isn't St. Vincent but St. Vincent doesn't actually exist, except as a part of Annie—and quite funny, on account of Annie not really having a grasp on what the persona of St. Vincent means to her, to Carrie, and to her audience. The transformation, if one can call it that, simply happens on stage, with this music, and in that particular moment.

Trying to be more assertive and sexual in real life (She tries to get Carrie to record a sex tape—with her new girlfriend Dakota Johnson, who gamely plays herself—for the documentary), Annie just starts looking like a jerk, making people uncomfortable with her selfishness and occasional cruelty, while not being aware of the fact. Meanwhile, Carrie starts to worry that her filmmaking ambitions have put an irreparable wedge between her and friend, while she also struggles with being separated from her sick father (played by Michael Bofshever).

The movie is at its most successful and amusing in the ways it examines the blurred lines within one's own personality and sense of identity, as well as the particular complications and contradictions of celebrity status. Clark, making her acting debut, offers a skilled and rather daring performance, serving as a form of self-parody, self-examination, and self-critique. The authentic scenes of her on stage display what a dynamic musician/performer she is, too.

Eventually and with far too much ambition, though, Clark, Brownstein, and Benz begin to further blur the lines between the fake documentary and the real movie we're actually watching. It doesn't quite work from a formal perspective, because there's a clear distinction between Carrie's documentary and the actual movie Benz is helming, meaning it's always clear that all of this has been staged to one degree or another. On a more foundational level, though, this story and this gag begin and end with a single idea—who Annie is, as opposed to St. Vincent, and what happens when the two personas merge.

The central idea of The Nowhere Inn is clever. Once that runs its course, there's really nowhere else for this movie to go—except deeper and deeper into itself, and further and further away from making much of a point.

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