Scarborough
“In Scarborough, writer Catherine Hernandez raucously celebrates the diversity and resilience of her community.”
Title: Scarborough (2021)
Directors: Shasha Nakhai 👩🏽🇵🇭🇳🇬🇨🇦 and Rich Williamson 👨🏼🇨🇦
Writer: Catherine Hernandez 👩🏽🇨🇦🌈
Reviewed by Li 👩🏻🇺🇸
—MILD SPOILERS AHEAD—
Technical: 4/5
Last week, the award-winning novel Scarborough by Catherine Hernandez had its cinematic debut at Toronto International Film Festival. The story follows three kids from the Kingston-Galloway/West Hill neighborhood of Scarborough (where the majority of scenes were filmed) and celebrates the diversity and resilience of its denizens who face health and education systems that seem stacked against them.
Hernandez brings a queer and multiracial perspective to the screenplay, penned in just two weeks after documentary-style filming by directors Shasha Nakhai and Rich Williamson had already begun. Gorgeously shot and packed with an impressive roster of several first-time actors, Scarborough casts a heady spell. In an author’s statement, Hernandez says “The characters from the book were borne out of love for my community” and that love translates fully to the screen: Close-ups fixate on young faces with eyes that seem older than they should be; tired parents struggle to keep everything together; and crystalline moments of connection balance the film’s dark themes. In one scene, a child is bullied on a school bus—the next, kids play with a colorful parachute in an after-school program, giggling and delighted.
Among other issues like addiction, child abuse, and systemic neglect, Scarborough manages to exude a sense of celebration. Hernandez entreats viewers to see the beauty of individuals who are all too often marginalized, foregoing some nuance in favor of this broader goal. Positive moments are gloriously rendered through wide smiles and sunlight; bad times swerve just as hard into angry and violent outbursts. Meanwhile, everything in between—the neutral exchanges and mild indifferences that make up reality—litter the cutting room floor. But it’s exactly this fuzzier gradient that could have lent Scarborough a bit more weight.
Gender: 5/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? YES
The film recognizes women as pillars of the community, many of them caregivers and educators. In its most sympathetic portrayals, three adults stand out: A Filipino mother Edna (Ellie Posadas), Indigenous mother Marie (Cherish Violet Blood), and after-school program leader Ms. Hina (Aliya Kanani), who is Indian and wears hijab. The script tends to portray them as perfect, which can blunt the depths of their characterizations. But it still feels rewarding to track their progress, from separate struggles to the support they eventually find in each other by film’s end.
Among the three kids we follow, two are girls: Marie’s daughter Sylvie (Essence Fox) and the wide-eyed, often silent Laura (Anna Claire Beitel) share occasional scenes as they develop a quiet friendship. Meanwhile, their schoolmate Bing (Liam Diaz) exhibits gender fluidity, admiringly painting his nails with leftover polish from the salon where his mother works, even as he grapples with feelings of shame over such inclinations.
Luckily, some antagonists help broaden the spectrum of female characters, as the administrative viper who stymies Ms. Hina at every turn, or Laura’s mother, who falls prey to her addiction to drugs and winds up leaving Laura in the equally incapable hands of her father. But overall, Scarborough focuses on the strength of women and the majority of screen time is devoted to their relationships with each other, and with Bing.
Race: 5/5
Where Hernandez celebrates women, she just as easily celebrates people of color. Considering Scarborough’s demographics, where the majority of the population (55.6%) was Asian in 2016, it’s wonderful to see Filipino-Iranian Nakhai as one of two filmmakers directing Asian characters like Ms. Hina, Edna, her mother Mae (played by Thao Nguyen), Bing, plus the aestheticians at the nail salon where Edna works. Other identities arrive through an Indigenous family led by Marie, played by Blackfoot actor and activist Cherish Violet Blood. Her husband Jonathan (Warren Greene, Ojibwe) lovingly cares for their kids Sylvie and Johnny (Felix Jedi Ingram Isaac).
The only area that feels a bit undercooked involves Black characters who come across as one-dimensional saints. Immigrant restaurant owner Ms. Winsum, played by Trini actor Rhoma Spencer, gives free food to locals who need it. Street artist George (Ronald Peters) always has a ready smile for Sylvie and Bing, even taking time out of one of his days to essentially babysit them while Edna tends to her patrons. George is later victimized by a belligerent white man, which adds to the unpleasant sense that he lacks agency in the film. But their flatness has more to do with the script’s preference for tugging on heartstrings by broad strokes, and in fact, very few of the characters of color in Scarborough could be considered complex.
Bonus for LGBTQ: +1.00
Queer writer Hernandez tells the story of 10-year-old Bing who is just beginning to explore his gender and sexuality. Thankfully, his mother realizes over the course of the film that her son might be “like his tito Ferdie,” who she explains to Bing had a boyfriend for years. The love and support that Bing receives from his mother, as well as from his best friend Sylvie, is heartwarming to watch.
Bonus for Religion: +0.50
Religion isn’t as overtly explored as gender, race, or sexuality, but different belief systems come up in natural ways. In no particular order, we see Edna’s Catholic background through effigies in her mother’s home and Bing’s Halloween costume as a priest, as he doles out Chinese haw flakes to classmates and adorably proclaims them “the body of Christ.” A funeral rite is presided over by an Ojibwe woman as she teaches the ritual to attendees, not all of whom are Indigenous. And Ms. Hina kindly explains to Laura what her hijab is and what it represents to her, that it “reminds her of who she is.”
Bonus for Disability: +0.25
Marie’s son Johnny, played by Isaac who was 4 years old at the start of filming, displays early signs of Autism Spectrum Disorder but is quick to be dismissed by a doctor who assumes Marie can’t handle the diagnosis (and the behavior therapy that would likely come with it.) According to production notes shared with press, Scarborough’s crew worked with Kerry’s Place Autism Services on set to help ensure his mannerisms felt authentic.
Marie also takes care of a husband with a disability, who appears with crutches and a cast on his leg, and later in the film, is unable to leave his bed with his illness having taken a turn for the worse. These portrayals are sensitively drawn, while themes of drug addiction and alcoholism—as told through the storylines of Laura’s abusive parents—are given less sympathy and screen time. That said, Scarborough does approach themes of disability through the lens of nondisabled characters like Marie or young Laura, which prevents a higher bonus in this category.
Mediaversity Grade: A+ 5.25/5
Scarborough sets out to stir up emotions in its viewers, sometimes leaning too hard on simplistic narrative devices in order to achieve that goal. Thankfully, filmmakers exercise restraint in their technical approach—observational footage and patient pacing—which helps to keep its inclusive messages from feeling too cloying.
Like Scarborough? Try these other titles set in working-class neighborhoods told by storytellers who come from there.
The Fabulous Filipino Brothers (2021)
Miss Juneteenth (2020)
Blindspotting (2018)