To Nowhere (2020): Queer Coming-of-Age British Indie (Review)

Released to cinemas and Curzon Home on 30th June, To Nowhere is the unflinching feature debut of director Sian Astor-Lewis. A striking blend of arthouse and kitchen sink, this low-budget, crowd-funded British indie explores the coming-of-age travails of two queer teenagers, taking us deep into the heart of their emotionally inarticulate journey and alcohol-fuelled destructive ennui.

Tulip (Lilit Lesser) and Finn (Josefine Glæsel) are our protagonists, young souls weighed down by a lifetime of burdens, hurt and abuse. Attracted like magnets, they assay the anonymous and unforgiving streets of London, bouyed by booze and teenage rebellion, whilst simultanously trying to comprehend and escape their inner demons. Having recently lost her mother, Tulip lives with a father (Michael Warburton) whose impotent grief is communicated towards her as rage and frustration, and her socially awkward uncle, Stanley (Orlando Seale) whose own luckless and uncertain navigation of the sprawling metropolis serves as a mirror to the girls’ experience. Despite her circumstances, the quiet Tulip seems in a better place than Finn, who is currently questioning her gender identity and appears constantly combative in the face of a hidden trauma that she daren’t confront. This obnoxious streak is immediately introduced at the start of the movie when, moments after waking alongside Tulip, she excuses herself to the bathroom where she proceeds to urinate on Stanley’s toothbrush. Viewers of a sensitive disposition please note; piss and blood will feature regularly in To Nowhere.

A visit to Tulip’s dementia-stricken Nan (Jane Wood; a stalwart of Britain’s experimental theatre, having been a former member of the Ken Campbell Roadshow alongside her husband Dave Hill and other notables such as Bob Hoskins, Sylvester McCoy and David Rappaport) sees the pair start the day as they mean to go on – pilfering her drinks cabinet, their sights set on mischief and oblivion. From there, they play idly on swings in parks before sneaking into bars to minseweep the dregs of abandoned pints, and later observe casual knee-tremblers against shuttered doorways. Their choices perfectly encapsulate the existential issue at the heart of their circumstances; caught in the hinterland between adolescence and adulthood, neither truly know how to behave, what to do or be, or even who they are. Meanwhile, the equally and curiously incomplete Stanley’s aimless wandering sees him take in a dance class, where his spirited moves incur the laughter of the spying Tulip and Finn, a fetish shop and a bar, where attempts at forging friendships fail in ways that afford audiences excruciating secondhand embarrassment, and a record store in which his innocent cooing over a baby sees him narrowly avoid a beating, having been mistaken for a peadophile. Audiences with long memories may smile here, as Seale played the unfortunately named Peter File in ’00s Channel 4 sitcom The IT Crowd.

Astor-Lewis invites us to consider all three as flotsom on the tumultuous sea of 21st century city life, but at least Tulip and Finn have one another. Later, as the pair retreat to Stanley’s room and discover the gimp masks he has purchased from the fetish shop earlier in the day, they act out a sexual fantasy in which their existential crises are finally spoken via this roleplay; “Who are you?” Finn demands of Tulip – it could easily be a vocalistion of the affrontery this confused teen feels in the face of someone, unlike her, so certain of her own gender. Inevitably, the tragic Stanley returns and the film seems to imply how, perhaps as a loner jealous of their bond, he has tried to supplant himself sexually between the pair previously. Suddenly, the intention behind Finn’s toilet habits become clear.

What I liked most about To Nowhere is how uncompromising and in your face it is in terms of character – it’s actually refreshing to see teenage queer characters allowed to behave on screen like little shits rather than saints, and both Lesser and Glæsel take that opportunity with both hands – but how the issues at the core of the narrative feel elusive, as hard to identify and grasp as they must be for the characters themselves. There’s a pervasive air to the proceedings that is never truly explored in detail, it just gets under your skin and I think that’s the right way to go. By the time the film reaches its conclusion, you’re aware something has been attained, but you’re unclear if it’s for better or worse.

Shot on a budget of just £27,000, handheld on the streets of the capital and now entirely self-distributed by Astor-Lewis and her producer Finbar Somers, To Nowhere is a remarkable feat that ought to be applauded. As a connoisseur of British indie, I sometimes find myself thinking of the opportunities were better in the 1980s or ’90s. Granted, we had no film industry in this period (and we still don’t) but we did at least have a medium in television which routinely afforded new creatives a chance to get their work seen by several million people. It’s meant as no disrespect to Astor-Lewis, who shows a real cinematic flair, when I say that this would work on television. It’s just that I mourn the passing of the days when the kind of challenging, intimate drama she has crafted here could easily and comfortably find a home at the BBC with Screen One, Screen Two or Screen: Play or on Channel 4, whose cinematic arm commenced with the more modest yet enterprising days of Film on Four. So many homegrown independant films now face an uphill struggle where getting made isn’t even the hardest part, it’s getting seen that seems to be the problem. The festival circuit and growing word of mouth is no consolation to the kind of immediate hit of playing to millions that TV once afforded, but then I guess that, even if TV commissioning editors did start to take a chance with standalone dramas again, the days of reaching that kind of audience died out the moment that the terrestial channels lost their monopoly. I don’t have the answer, I just know that the system our film industry operates within isn’t working. To Nowhere deserves to be seen and the talent on display – both in front of and behind the camera – deserves to be nurtured.

Mark’s Archive: To Nowhere (2022)