Director: Paula González-Nasser
Writer: Paula González-Nasser
Stars: Mimi Davila
Synopsis: Sofia is a location scout for a TV show in New York City. Over the course of one day, she is invited into homes, businesses, and lives across the city, witnessing the private spaces and dramas of countless strangers, until her work takes a sudden, personal turn.
From a practical standpoint, it would have been impossible for Paula González-Nasser to see Radu Jude’s Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World before she wrote her debut feature, The Scout. But the two films, both excellent observational works, have quite a bit in common with one another, despite Jude’s being the significantly more vulgar of the unlikely duo. The Locarno Film Festival’s 2023 program deemed Jude’s picture a “(t)ale of Cinema and Economics in Two Parts,” followed by a description of its main character, Angela (Ilinca Manolache), as “overworked and underpaid.” Combine the two separate thoughts into one statement, thus linking the core concepts of cinema and economics to the conditions of being overworked and underpaid, and you have The Scout, a film in which toiling away at the day and tacking on overtime hours for the sake of art is the norm. Like Jude’s Angela, The Scout’s Sofia (Mimi Davila) spends a significant chunk of her week driving around New York City, through its many tunnels and down its many streets, and communicating with strangers; the only difference is that Sofia spends her days scouting potential filming locations for character’s homes in a new TV show rather than interviewing former employees for a corporation’s work safety video.
While Jude’s ideas derive from his skill as a master satirist, González-Nasser has spent the better part of the past decade working on sets as everything from producer’s assistant (If Beale Street Could Talk and On the Rocks) to location scout herself (Never Rarely Sometimes Always). Even if it hadn’t come directly from its writer-director, it would be clear that real-life experience clearly informed this first film, one that feels crafted by hands more seasoned and calloused by the industry it depicts than those a first-time filmmaker should theoretically have. It helps that she’s surrounded herself with pure cinematic talents like Free Time director Ryan Martin Brown, who produced and co-edited The Scout, and cinematographer Nicola Newton, who shot 18 shorts before working on this feature. But this debut is a work of such unmistakable personal endurance that it’s likely González-Nasser would have made the triumph that is The Scout no matter who was working beside her. It’s her story; we’re just along for the ride.
Said jaunt is far from the sort where twists and turmoils dictate the story’s otherwise lateral movement, and it’s all the more assured because of it. There isn’t so much a typical nor specific plot to The Scout as there is a series of events that make up its runtime, some more interesting than others, but all existing in the same vacuum. To the moody hum of Dan Arnes’ fantastic score, Sofia travels from one prospective film site to the next, occasionally breaking in between to place flyers on the doors of homes her superiors would like to take a peek at should the owners express interest to Sofia. As she drives, jogs, and chats her way around each Big Apple borough over the course of a day, she checks her voicemail – which seems to have endless storage space, given how many homeowners call her back either agreeing to have their place viewed or telling Sofia to buzz off – struggles to find parking spots that won’t result in a ticket, and connects with each property’s occupants. Some of the interactions are more rudimentary, like the first chat we see her have, with an elderly woman whose children have all grown up and moved away and whose husband passed away a few years ago. Others, like the exchange she shares with a brand new stay-at-home dad, border on flirty, if not downright creepy; “Do they usually hire pretty girls to work these jobs?” he asks, minutes before the scene cuts, and Sofia is on to her next task.
A lesser filmmaker might allow that aforementioned scene to linger on too long, eager to capitalize on the dramatic tension that gestures toward an altered future in its wake. González-Nasser has no such intentions. She’s more eager to allow her film to experience evolution in real time, as if Sofia is dictating her film’s narrative as its minutes tick by. It might not sound like the most exciting “Choose Your Own Adventure” concept, but The Scout is so enveloped by its setting and the impact it has on its titular character that we can’t help but feel the pressure, too. New York, the concrete jungle where dreams are made of, isn’t necessarily what’s dragging Sofia down – it’s her job, as is often the case – but its empty promises don’t help. Like the many locations she scouts, Sofia has learned to accept that she will never fully satisfy anyone, least of all herself. Everything she does is almost good enough, but never gets over the necessary line. Even when her work takes a “sudden, personal turn,” as the film’s synopsis suggests, the long term effects of the situation never really take root, for Sofia won’t allow them to. She’s too focused on pushing forward, whether it’s past or through, in order to waste as little time as possible. It’s no way to live, but she seems to have found a groove.
And we watch her operate in that rut-adjacent routine for 89-minutes, never once feeling disinterested nor unfulfilled ourselves. The Scout is the rare sort of movie that rewards your investment in the lives of its characters entirely through honesty, of which it lacks none. González-Nasser’s composed direction, aided perfectly by Newman’s meticulously-framed photography, allows the film to infuse itself with a docudrama-esue candor, the kind that makes you feel as though you’re watching someone discover the reality of their life before your very eyes. The gut-punch that this film inspires is related to our inability to do anything about Sofia’s struggles, especially not if things were to go awry. That’s both a credit to Mimi Davila’s phenomenal, subdued lead turn and to González-Nasser and co.’s trust in the story they set out to tell. Mundanity can be beautiful, and it can also be dispiriting. That it can at once be both is The Scout’s revelation. And who are we to not bask in the brilliance of discovery?
