Scarborough. It’s that vast community in Toronto way out east where Line 3 (1985-2023) used to go. Torontonians now travel yonder way past Broadview, Pape, Woodbine, and Kennedy Stations and hitch a bus. Or, if they’re unlucky, they miss the last train home and hit the blue line, a late night vomit comet full of drunks and students.
That’s the world that Amar Wala lovingly invites audiences to explore in Shook. The dramedy marks the first fiction feature for Wala, who has adeptly honed his chops in documentary. That eye for daily life is on full display here, as is the sense of care and respect that documentary filmmakers have in their blood. Shook is a loving portrait of a community with a sense of all the hidden gems that make Scarborough a distinct place to live, but also a world with its own unique complexities.
Saamer Usmani stars as Ashish, an Indian-Canadian writer aspiring to live la vie bohème. Wala situates Ash’s situation from the outset within the dynamics of privilege of who can be a creative type in a city as crowded, competitive, and expensive as Toronto. Ash nourishes his creative spirit by putting in a few clicks on the TTC so that he can clack away on his laptop at a hipster coffee shop in the heart of Toronto. Subway stop after subway stop flashes by as Ash waits out the ride. One feels the malaise of the commute (a bit too much) in Shook‘s extended travel interludes, but the effect is twofold. Living outside the city centre, Ash doesn’t exist in a bubble the way other Torontonians do.
That sense becomes apparent when the barista at Ash’s favourite coffee shop, Claire (Amy Forsyth), asks for his name. He says “Alex,” wary of sharing “Ashish.” Claire looks skeptical and teases that she knows that isn’t true. Ash goes on the defensive. He’s unaware that she’s flirting, and not necessarily trying to be casually racist. But there’s certainly a dynamic at play.
Shook embeds these undercurrents of daily experience that inform Ash’s worldview. His budding relationship with Claire dances around his suspicion of her intentions for dating a brown man, but also his anxiety over upholding the expectations he feels his parents have for his personal life. He assumes they consider his professional pursuits unworthy of their sacrifices, and feels obliged to give them something to be proud of.
His parents don’t have it any easier. They’ve recently split and Ashish can’t forgive his father for betraying his mother, which inevitably bleeds into his connection with Claire. Yet Shook observes Ashish reluctantly fulfilling his familial duties, aided and egged on by childhood friends. Usmani gives a refreshing performance as Ash and embraces his character’s fallibility. He plays him like a writer honing his draft, perpetually self-editing and finding his place along the way.
Shook tours through the neighbourhoods of Toronto, observing these relationships as they play out in noodle shops, coffee houses, bars, trendy cocktail joints, and house parties. Wala brings a great sense of place to Shook. He unabashedly shoots Toronto as Toronto and echoes his own protagonist’s drive to root his stories in people and places that are recognizably real.
Shook sometimes struggles in scripting the dialogue, though, as some exchanges are a bit on the nose, particularly regarding the racial dynamics at play. At the same time, this observation comes from a white critic’s perspective and echoes points that Ash and company hammer home: it’s impossible to know life through another’s eyes.
The film wrestles with that complexity in a thread in which Ash tries to sell his book to publishers. They love the “authenticity” but don’t know how to market it. Put another way they want We Lives in da Ghetto. Ash’s book, however, is decidedly not that. Shook mirrors Ash’s philosophy for drawing from everyday life and rejecting stories of trauma and poverty. There’s an audience for such stories and many viewers, whether they’re within the GTA or watching from far beyond, should relate.
