American Beauty | 8525 Sepulveda Boulevard, North Hills — The Motel Where Carolyn Screams in the Car

Sepulveda Boulevard through North Hills is one of the least romantic streets in Los Angeles: eleven miles of car lots, taquerias, tyre shops and motels with hand-painted rates. The Travel Inn at 8525, formerly the Top Hat Motel, is where Carolyn Burnham meets Buddy Kane, the Real Estate King.

Annette Bening plays those scenes as release rather than romance. Carolyn has spent the film performing competence — the pruning shears matched to the clogs, the mantra about projecting an image of success — and here she finally makes a noise that is not for anybody's benefit. Then she drives away and practises her smile in the mirror at a red light. The motel is the only place in the film where she stops managing herself, and it is a roadside motel on a truck route, which is the joke.

Choosing this stretch of Sepulveda was not an accident. A motel on a boulevard is somewhere you can be nobody for two hours, and Carolyn's whole life is built on being somebody in a market that is watching.

Stand across the road at rush hour, when the traffic on Sepulveda is six lanes of people going home. Nobody looks at the motel. That is what it is for, and it is the closest thing to freedom Carolyn ever finds.

Photo: Los Angeles roadside motel signage (Pexels, free licence) — illustrative of the boulevard's motel architecture.