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An episodic, bittersweet adventure bumming through New York City’s most photogenic homes, rooftops, and pet stores might sound like a season of High Maintenance. That’s partially due to the work of former location scout Paula Andrea González-Nasser, who helped nail down the settings that gave the series its lived-in realism. Expanding on and fictionalizing that experience, González-Nasser makes her feature debut as a writer-director with The Scout, a dry dramedy that zeroes in on a small facet of film and TV production to make a contemplative and funny portrait of a city, an industry, and the sacrifices needed to live in both.
Location scout Sofia (Mimi Davila) thanklessly zips around New York scoping apartments and storefronts for a pilot her production company is planning to shoot. Like so many metatextual riffs on the entertainment world, the show sounds terrible, full of racial stereotypes, interchangeable characters, and violence for violence’s sake. But even hackwork requires people who can run the cables, set up the lights, and find the spots to shoot the thing. The workers below the line suffer to bring a vision to life, however silly or compromised it might be.
Over its elliptical narrative, told through Sofia’s countless departures and arrivals, The Scout reveals some of the ridiculous reality behind how the sausage is made, but it also reveals the specific obstacles encountered by one of its less-appreciated contributors. For starters, a young woman going door to door on her own naturally gets hit on in weird yet predictable ways, and the mostly fixed camerawork from cinematographer Nicola Newton makes the audience feel as stuck in these conversations as Sofia. Those she’s trapped with, the homeowners and business managers, all share an implied loneliness—why else would they have agreed to let a TV production take over their place?
Navigating these interactions with a charming reserve, Davila is curious, fed up, or in survival mode, depending on the situation. Hers is a job where social flexibility is key, and even the successes come at a price. Sofia’s stiff interactions with the empty nesters and young parents she encounters is handled with a realistic awkwardness that mirrors the light satire that crops up when she returns to the “creatives” on her team. The most evocative part of the script comes from a coincidence: Sofia’s endlessly taped-up letters catch the eye of an old college friend (Otmara Marrero), and their catch-up lightly interweaves little dramas and histories into their conversation.
With a similar elegance, The Scout quietly highlights how voyeurism grows out of this profession, where the natural curiosity that perhaps led to the job in the first place backs up to a protective distance over time. There’s still a desire to observe the lives of others, but actually experiencing the reality of that over and over again has raised up Sofia’s defenses. That González-Nasser and Davila are able to communicate that history through implication alone underlines how well they understand the central character.
The film relays a deep sense of Sofia throughout its quiet, brief runtime, whether she’s dealing with parking problems, crashing back at home, or keeping up the polite banter with property owners. Cut together by Free Time filmmaker Ryan Martin Brown, The Scout shares a similarly methodical, water-treading, cringe-adjacent rhythm to that movie and some of its other NYC indie contemporaries, like Joanna Arnow’s The Feeling That The Time For Doing Something Has Passed. An adrift ennui permeates not just the narrative of the film or the mindset of its main character, but the timing and tone of its images. When given enough time to ask “What are we doing here?” the answers easily flit between funny and sad.
González-Nasser’s understated, low-key debut offers all the pleasures of slice-of-life realism. The Scout is as pretty-gloomy as an off day in New York, as winning as a good work anecdote, as defeating as another day on the job, and as listless as a generation starting to feel the shadow of their looming midlife crisis. It’s an honest little trip around the city, and a relatable snapshot of all the details that go into an offbeat career.
Director: Paula Andrea González-Nasser
Writer: Paula Andrea González-Nasser
Starring: Mimi Davila, Rutanya Alda, Max Rosen, Ikechukwu Ufomadu, Sarah Herrman, Otmara Marrero, Matt Barats
Release Date: June 5, 2025 (Tribeca)
