Breathing life into a Scarborough strip mall

Driving east on Lawrence Avenue and Warden in the heart of the Toronto suburb of Scarborough, you could be forgiven for not noticing on your left the unprepossessing strip mall with the prepossessing name of Wexford Heights Plaza. Bookended by S.K.T. Jewellers & Textiles and Helen’s House of Hair Styling, it doesn’t look like it has any stories to tell.

Writer/director Joyce Wong begs to differ. Her debut feature, Wexford Plaza, tells the story of Betty (Reid Asselstine), a 19-year-old just hired as part of the security team at a very similar plaza. Friendly but shy, she does her best to fit in with her doofus colleagues, before striking up a relationship of sorts with Danny (Darrel Gamotin), who works at a bar there.

Wong’s low-key comic tone will have viewers thinking they know Betty and Danny, but a Rashomon-like twist in the film’s second half changes everything. Now we’re seeing things from Danny’s perspective, and his life has more moving pieces than Betty imagined. The effect is to make both characters’ lives much more serious, without ever quite losing the film’s light touch. It’s a near miracle of screenwriting.

The film is also a joy in the way it breathes life into a setting so taken for granted as to be almost invisible. The strip mall, with its harsh fluorescent lighting and cookie-cutter signage — “cleaners,” “barbers shop,” etc. — achieves a kind of slick beauty in its abandoned nighttime scenes. As good as the performers are, the mall deserves a supporting actor credit.

Wexford Plaza was actually shot at the soon-to-bedemolished Bathurst Manor Plaza in nearby North York. The real Wexford Heights Plaza looks remarkably similar, but includes the 59-year-old Wexford Restaurant, which has been serving famous breakfasts almost back to the days when Scarborough was a mere township outside the city. Who says strip malls don’t have stories to tell? •••• ½

Wexford Plaza opens Nov. 27 in Toronto, Whitby, Ont., Ottawa, Winnipeg, Edmonton and Calgary.

Darrel Gamotin, Reid Asselstine, Darrel Gamotin and Francis Melling in Wexford Plaza.