For cinephiles, visiting iconic places depicted in past media is a fun activity, especially in New York City. However, location team members feel the complete opposite when acquiring these settings due to their limited control and money in obtaining the spaces. Paula Andrea González-Nasser presents sucxh tedious task in The Scout, which is partially based on her experience as a location scout on movies like Search Party (Scot Armstrong, 2015) and Never Rarely Sometimes Always (Eliza Hittman, 2020).
González-Nasser’s debut feature oversees Sofie (a commanding Mimi Davila)’s rough patches in finding the perfect house for a television pilot within the next 24 hours. She needs to adapt to the property owner’s environments by navigating the personal and universal in her encounters with them, driving borough to borough, and parking her car with the risk of not getting a parking ticket (Sofie says later in the film that she has four boxes worth of fees). Last-minute status updates keep her schedule subject to change.
The Scout is the 3rd feature from emerging NYC-based and Florida-raised collective 5th Floor Pictures, of which González-Nasser is a member, following their indie comedies Yelling Fire in an Empty Theatre (Justin Zuckerman, 2022)and Free Time (Ryan Martin Brown, 2023). Like the previous two films, it examines New Yorkers facing the economic and social forces that prevent them from fulfilling their desires. Unlike the two earlier films, their newest output is minimal with its mise-en-scene, dialogue, and lack of traditional shot coverage. DoP Nicola Newton’s stationary shots elicit the unfamiliar when entering a new space. While The Scout maintains the erratic havoc that comes from real-life situations such as moving into an NYC apartment with established residents or gaining the (temporary) freedom of not having a job, as seen in Yelling Fire and Free Time, respectively, the humour in The Scout is primarily realism from the everyday minutiae within filmmaking.
González-Nasser and her company’s use of each location for only one scene to film is not purely for logistical reasons in the film’s budget but also to correlate Sofie’s instability in her job regarding a work-life balance. Many of the interiors present in the film belong to the film’s supporting characters who appear once. They include a suspicious software developer (Max Rosen), a cautious parent (Inspector Ike’s Ike Ufomadou) regarding Sofie’s superiors filming at his home, and a fish store owner who wants to be a novelist (Cash Cow’s Matt Barats). Coincidentally, it does play out like Steven Knight’s car-setting Locke if Tom Hardy’s character took multiple breaks throughout his trip.
The film, however, has minor plot holes when operating in this line of work in the digital age, as Sofie takes photos on a Sony camera over a phone. If she had photographed on the phone, she might have finished her deadlines by sending them via Dropbox and carving time for friends and hobbies. While it may not bail Sofie out of a parking ticket, the film does an excellent job of balancing the personal and professional when forming relationships. It is an inquisitive, droll annal that entails how connecting with people is difficult and that there is nothing magical about uniting with strangers or filmmaking. There is always one yes in a city with more than three million housing units.
The Scout just premiered at Tribeca 2025.
