The Nowhere Inn (IFC Films)
Directed By: Bill Benz
Starring: St Vincent, Carrie Brownstein
Plot Summary: From real-life friends Annie Clark (a.k.a. GRAMMY award-winning recording and touring artist St. Vincent) and Carrie Brownstein (Portlandia, Sleater-Kinney) comes the metafictional account of two creative forces banding together to make a documentary about St. Vincent’s music, touring life, and on-stage persona. But they quickly discover unpredictable forces lurking within subject and filmmaker that threaten to derail the friendship, the project, and the duo’s creative lives.
The Nowhere Inn cleverly blends reality and fiction. Indeed, St. Vincent is of course a real band and Carrie Brownstein is also a very successful musician, writer and performer. Taking this a step further, you get to see actual live-performances. In this way, it differs from most mockumentaries. The Nowhere Inn has a really strong first act with Bill Benz doing a great job at establishing a tone that is slightly off. Of course, that feeling only increases as the lines between fiction and nonfiction spiral out of control. Benz also showcases a darkly sardonic, razor-sharp wit about it. The problem is, though the movie starts to come totally undone in the latter half of the film. The main issue here is that Benz and St. Vincent and Brownstein struggle to build and expand upon the premise in a way that feels meaningful and more importantly engaging.
Benz certainly has a lot of experience directing short format but not a lot when it comes to feature length formatting. This may be why it seems like the narrative threads fail to connect as a cohesive whole. There’s a scene involving St Vincent’s faux-Southern family that felt very out-of-place and didn’t really add anything to the overarching theme. In fact, it feels repetitive to the point the film is clearing trying to hammer home. It’s a shame because I think the concept is highly interesting, and I enjoyed the pivots into surreal and uncomfortable areas.
It boils down to being backed into a corner both story and theme-wise and having nowhere to really go with it. Had the filmmakers just gone full Mulholland Drive a la David Lynch with it, I think it may have worked better. I do think the movie has something to say about fame, being authentic and the divide between the star persona and the person behind it. But, if I’m being honest, we’ve seen these explored in other films, but maybe not in this format.
Whilst I loved the daring approach of The Nowhere Inn and the lead performances, the film feels like it wastes its incredible format. It wades in the same old, “isn’t stardom phony” narrative has been explored in cinema since practically the invention of the medium.
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Big film nerd and TCM Obsessed. Author of The Ultimate Guide to Strange Cinema from Schiffer Publishing. Resume includes: AMC’s The Bite, Scream Magazine etc. Love all kinds of movies and television and have interviewed a wide range of actors, writers, producers and directors. I currently am a regular co-host on the podcast The Humanoids from the Deep Dive and have a second book in the works from Bear Manor.
