St. Vincent Meta-Doc Is Tedious and Trite

“The Nowhere Inn” — a brand new meta-concert doc produced, written by and starring Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein and Annie “St. Vincent” Clark — is a group of comedic and musical sketches that aren’t humorous, bizarre or considerate sufficient to promote its creators’ insistent, however largely trite and undeveloped, concepts in regards to the performative nature of self-fashioning and artistic authenticity.

Directed by Bill Benz (Brownstein’s semi-regular “Portlandia” collaborator), “The Nowhere Inn” is initially offered as a dramatized model of Brownstein and Clark’s real-life makes an attempt at filming a St. Vincent live performance film. So initially, the film’s sketchier qualities seem to mirror each the surreal emotional peaks and troughs of a reside musical tour.

Unfortunately, the film’s cringe humor-style gags are largely skinny and monotonous, and even just a few psychedelic later scenes — which appear to be trendy however tame homages to each Donald Cammell’s “Performance” and David Lynch’s “Inland Empire” — don’t fairly land. “The Nowhere Inn” is mainly the film model of these poems about writers’ block that you simply was your highschool’s inventive writing class. The largest distinction between your adolescent, try-hard makes an attempt at phoning it in and “The Nowhere Inn” is that it’s onerous to think about that anyone demanded that Brownstein and Clark produce a film about their creative constipation.

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Since “The Nowhere Inn” follows Clark on certainly one of her St. Vincent excursions, the film predictably begins as Clark’s narrative however ultimately issues Brownstein and her incapacity to separate herself from her buddy’s artwork and identification. The opening scene is the primary a part of a working gag: Throughout the film, Clark is confronted by obnoxious hangers-on who don’t know who she is, together with a limo driver who mysteriously pulls Clark’s automobile over to the facet of the highway and disappears after Clark tries to sing certainly one of her songs for him.

This scene is mainly the film in a nutshell: Clark is confronted by representatives of a curious however insensitive world however, in bending over backwards to satisfy their expectations, solely winds up concerned in mildly alienating however largely unmemorable backstage encounters.

Clark could also be a commanding presence on-stage — as we see in short, however dynamic live performance footage — however she’s a crashing bore at any time when she tries to fulfill Brownstein’s peevish requests to be extra fascinating off-stage. Admittedly, Brownstein, enjoying herself, doesn’t give the film model of Clark that a lot to work with when she means that Clark strive throwing a dance get together or speaking about her incarcerated dad as an alternative of enjoying Scrabble or enthusing about radishes.

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There’s additionally not a lot occurring on-screen when Clark pontificates about feeding off of her viewers’s feelings or forces a squirming Brownstein to movie an off-screen lesbian intercourse act. Brownstein’s character isn’t far more compelling, sadly. She largely stands by whereas Clark has the least fascinating psychotic breakdown in latest cinema.

Throughout “The Nowhere Inn,” the film model of Clark doesn’t do something extra outlandish or humorous than making an attempt to behave like an arty Madonna clone. In a typical scene, Clark tries to amp up her band’s extra unique and edgy parts for Brownstein’s film, like when she describes one bandmate as “Japanese” whereas a horrified Brownstein lets her buddy embarrass herself. That’s a great begin, however the scene by no means builds to something that the final couple of vignettes didn’t already recommend, partly as a result of Clark, enjoying herself, doesn’t reveal something about herself…