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Reviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
NOWHERE MAN
Answering his door bell one morning, white bread Conrad (Michael Rodrick) finds nothing but
an unidentified videotape lying on the ground. Curiosity gets the better of Conrad. Watching the
video, he immediately notices the woman with long hair is none other than his fiancée
Jennifer (Debbie Rochon). In the film within the film, a detective pays a house call to a woman
in distress. Just as Julianne Moore as a porn actress in Boogie Nights carefully and
consciously utters every word of blue dialogue, Rochon as an aspiring actress gives a similarly
hilarious, phonetic performance. Not only is the video pornographic but to make matters more
humiliating for Conrad, Jennifer’s scene partner is Daddy Mac (real-life porn actor Frank
Olivier), famous for his endowment and star of “White Girls on My Jock.”
Not since Paul Verhoeven’s The Fourth Man has a film produced such castration anxiety.
This is a different kind of horror film, where the threatened victim is male vanity. As a
spurned woman, Debbie Rochon’s vulnerability and heartfelt performance lifts this no-budget
production shot on digital video. Unlike Jennifer’s ill-fated acting career, Rochon comes across
as natural. Though relying on shock value, Nowhere Man does have subtle moments;
during a casual conversation in happier times, Conrad, with Jennifer looking away, preens
shirtless in front of a mirror, flexing his muscles, before his ego takes a fall. Since the
tumultuous outcome of Jennifer and Conrad’s unraveling relationship is revealed in the first act,
Nowhere Man relies less on suspense as it does on a high squirm and gross-out factor.
For men, it will be an endurance test to sit still, though the closing credits reassures,
tongue-in-cheek, that no penises were harmed in the making of the film. Kent Turner
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