If you haven’t read the hysterically unhinged 148-tweet thread that details how the eponymous Aziah “Zola” King (Taylour Paige) and “this white bitch” Stefani (Riley Keough) fell out, fear not: Zola will gladly fill in all the gory deets for you. One of the buzziest breakout splashes from 2020’s Sundance Film Festival, Zola is a kinetic social media-influenced dark comedy that adapts what was deemed “the greatest stripper saga ever tweeted” with visual style and sardonic pizzaz to spare. Exploding with personality and a flair for Gen-Z garishness (with too many tweet-notification audio drops to count), the latest great from A24 traps audience, alongside the titular Zola, in a prison-stay of a weekend as everything goes horribly wrong. Before it all went viral.
Following its own behind-the-scenes scandal that ousted original director James Franco (who was then and is still now in the spotlight for his involvement in multiple sexual misconduct charges) and replaced him with Janicza Bravo, Zola stands out from the crowd. It just looks and feels different from the dozens of other films that try to distill the strange, twisty zeitgeist of the social media generation into something both entertaining and of actual artistic worth. From a purely experiential stance, Zola feels like an aesthetic and thematic blend of Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers, where a gun-lined critique of American capitalism hid amongst wet T-shirt contests and neon-colored bikinis, and HBO’s drug-addled teen drama Euphoria, while remaining highly distinct in its own right, popping with audiovisual personality and a soft spot for rough-and-tumble characters.
The benefits of having a woman’s touch behind the camera is readily apparent as Bravo tells the story of two sex worker strangers meeting at a Hooters with a fury and energy that is hard to match. The two pole performers quickly bond over their clothing-optional aerial profession, innocently flirting and exchanging numbers to hang out later. The very next morning, the still-friendly-but-undeniably-shady Stefani invites Zola on a road trip to the promised land of Florida, where an ostensible tsunami of dollar bills await their disrobing talents. Zola hesitates when Stefani obscures the details of who will be accompanying them but ultimately agrees to come along.
Joined by submissive beta-boyfriend Derrek (Succession’s Nicholas Braun) and an unnerving “roommate” (Colman Domingo), whose preference to go unnamed when introduced reveals the first glimmer of a dangerous edge, Stefani and Zola embark on a cross-country journey. Their sojourn to the Sunshine State quickly pretzels into a trip from hell when Zola realizes she has been cat-fished, the promises of high-paying strip club work a front for being prostituted against her will. And that’s just the beginning of Zola’s woes.
Hyper-stylized yet displaying a keen eye for strong characterization, Zola thrives off the terrific quartet of performances that drive the film. Paige grounds the film in a sense of desperate humanity as the bizarre details of this stranger-than-fiction tale stack up; Keough digs her heels into the morally-questionable disrepute of Stefani, crafting one of her most memorable screen turns to date; Braun is hilariously out-of-his-league as Stefani’s desperate and pitiful lover, delivering a low-class spin on “Cousin Greg” that makes for an always-funny counterbalance to the increasing depravity of their situation; and Domingo waffles between snake oil charm and explosive bouts of anger sure to chill the blood of anyone in his warpath. Each of them are firing at the heights of their powers, making for some of the most memorable onscreen characters of the year. You could literally give any single one of them an Oscar and it wouldn’t be misallocated.
That’s partially because Bravo’s adaptation of the “Queen of Hoeism”’ story unravels all the drama, suspense, bizarre character development, black humor, and snappy shade of @Zola’s epic Twitter rant to create a uniquely involving tale of budding friendship, betrayal, opportunity, and oppression. For a movie about a stripper road trip, Zola feels almost Homerian in its grandiosity, until it abruptly ends, mysteriously omitting the killer ending (which may or may not be true) of the Twitter thread source material. It’s worth noting as well that beneath all the casually degrading slang and cruel indifference to sex workers’ emotional and physical well-being at the center of this story, Zola hums with feminist verve, championing the fact that sex work is not only work but some of the hardest work out there, and sex workers are living, breathing individuals, glittered and pastied, just husting to make ends meet. Just not all of them make for the best road trip buddies.
CONCLUSION: Janicza Bravo’s snappy and stylized ‘Zola’ is a bottle-rocket of artistic energy boasting four of the most-notable performances of the year from Taylour Paige, Riley Keough, Colman Domingo, and Nicholas Braun. An all-around electrifying watch despite a weak ending.
A-
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