Directed by: Bill Benz
Starring: Annie Clark, Carrie Brownstein, Dakota Johnson, Michael Bofshever
Unrated, 91 minutes
Who is Annie Clark? On paper she’s a Grammy-winning singer-songwriter who performs under the moniker St. Vincent, making rock music in the tradition of avant-garde artists like David Bowie. Known for adopting entirely new personas (and new haircuts) with each album she releases, Clark performs small, robotic choreography in her concerts, playing dissonant guitar solos and singing heady lyrics for audiences that aren’t sure whether to dance or stand perfectly still. For 15 years she’s been fine-tuning her stage presence, but is there a difference between the real Annie Clark and the St. Vincent character she plays onstage?
That’s the question at the heart of “The Nowhere Inn,” the fictionalized concert film that Clark wrote with Carrie Brownstein, herself an accomplished musician (and the co-star and co-creator of “Portlandia”). Clark and Brownstein here play heightened versions of themselves as they collaborate on a St. Vincent tour documentary. But what begins as a straightforward project turns into a twisted psychological journey, as they struggle with the documentary format and contemplate what it means to be authentic, whether in front of a camera or merely in front of each other. “The Nowhere Inn” splices together scenes of the tour, of Clark and Brownstein discussing the film they’re making, and of surreal scenes from the movie-within-the-movie. It’s not quite a mockumentary, but it’s not straight fiction, either.
Strange and fascinating though it may be, “The Nowhere Inn” isn’t a film of overwhelming thematic substance. For all its rumination on the self and the masks people wear, the movie never moves beyond this simplistic question of what makes a person “real.” In fairness, it doesn’t need to; threading together several versions of Annie Clark, the film creates a compelling story out of her own self-manipulation. In one scene, an interviewer asks Clark if she’ll get her cousin into a show, and Clark, not wanting to seem rude, agrees to do it; later, when she meets that cousin at an afterparty, Clark coldly declines to have a photograph taken with her. In another ludicrous sequence, we find ourselves at a ranch house in Texas, meeting Clark’s “family,” its many members all clad in Stetson hats and denim—quite possibly the farthest thing from the futuristic vision boards of St. Vincent’s music. “This isn’t your real family,” Brownstein has to remind her.
Ironically, the movie’s artificiality is most tangibly felt when it touches on actual events in Clark’s life. In one scene, Brownstein takes her to a prison to visit her father (Clark’s real-life father served time on federal stock manipulation charges), but the scene turns tense before they get inside. As Clark loses her composure, an exasperated Brownstein tells her, “I feel like I can’t elicit anything authentic from you anymore.” It’s the emotional peak of the film, but it’s also the moment when we’re most aware that these two performers are playing versions of themselves, and that their lines are scripted. “This feels very spontaneous,” Clark replies with bitter sarcasm; she could be ridiculing Brownstein’s attempt to manufacture an authentic moment for the documentary, but she might be lampooning “The Nowhere Inn” itself.
It’s not all highbrow metaphysical drama, though. “The Nowhere Inn” showcases Clark’s and Brownstein’s playful sides, whether it’s a ribald cameo from Dakota Johnson (“Fifty Shades of Grey”), or a musical number in which Clark’s fake Texas family sings one of St. Vincent’s songs, accompanied not by the usual electronic getups but rather by acoustic guitars and upright bass. At the movie’s climax, the absurd finally takes over: Brownstein, suddenly dressed like Clark (and with the wig to match), runs screaming into the desert.
Even though “The Nowhere Inn” argues that describing the “real” Annie Clark is an impossible task, it still gives the impression of her, through an accumulation of oddities that speak to a larger whole. She’s a performer who dons her domineering onstage persona like a costume, but who sometimes leaves that costume on; a rock star in a post-rock star age, insecure with fame but needing it for her larger artistic project; normal in certain mundane ways, but also a counterargument to the very idea of normalcy. “The Nowhere Inn” might be pretentious inside baseball for those already familiar with St. Vincent’s music, but anything less contrived would belie her artistic vision. It’s not controlled chaos, but chaotic control.
Originally published in The Harvard Press on 10/8/21.