Slice of Life Film Garners Big Laughs: The Scout Film Review
Still from The Scout. Photo courtesy of the Calgary Underground Film Festival.
When you’re watching a movie or a television show, do you ever wonder how the locations are chosen? Some locations are built, some are on soundstages, but especially for lower budget fare, they are shot on actual location, which is the job of a location scout. In Paula Andrea Gonzalez-Nasser’s directorial debut, she mines her own experiences as a location scout (for shows like Search Party, Russian Doll and High Maintenance) to make a raw, personal slice of life character drama that also has some big laughs
The centre of the film is Sofia, played by Mimi Davila, and you witness her on a long day as a location scout, visiting multiple locations and seeing both strangers and friends as she surveys and takes photos of their homes. Gonzalez-Nasser does a nice job of making you feel like you are on the long day with Sofia, where you are on pins-and-needles with every conversation, waiting for the other shoe to drop. This is a great film to watch in a theater, as there are moments in these conversational moments (especially when one of the male characters remarks “do they always hire pretty women?”) where you can audibly say “OH NO” as I did. The MVP of the film is Matt Barats, who owns a fish store. Barats is a Calgary Underground Film Festival regular, with his remarkable film Cash Cow and as a creator of the Reveries series (like Reveries: The Mind Prison, which had its world premiere at CUFF last year), and he elevates with such a lived-in mystique, where you have almost certainly encountered a guy like him, who will talk your ear off about his next creative project.
The Scout is a film that could hit for you, especially if you are in this line of work, while for others, it might test your patience at points. Do we really need to spend the opening two minutes looking at a fan in a bedroom? Let’s cut to the chase! The end of the film also leaves a bit to be desired, doing the classic indie film thing where it cuts off mid scene, which to me is always a crutch when the filmmaker doesn’t know exactly how to end their film, like when you watch Saturday Night Live and they don’t know how to end a sketch. The film is worth it for all of the stuff in the middle though, and should give you a new appreciation for the locations you see on your favourite TV shows and movies.