'Zola' A Review

Zola is a dark comedy thriller about Detroit server/dancer Zola's(Taylour Paige) weekend roadtrip to Florida with a new acquaintance Stefani(Riley Keough) that starts off ostensibly as a chance to make some money dancing but quickly turns into a bizarre and convoluted journey into power, danger, sex, and crime. Based on the 2015 viral twitter thread from the real life Zola.

Paige translates the character's power and reserve with an absolute electricity, she is onscreen nearly the entire runtime and you are captivated from the jump. She conveys a mountain of subtext and emotion with subtle facial expressions, body language, and oblique dialogue. Zola is a dancer and Paige's performance is very physical, in the dancing scenes there is a fluid sensuality, a graceful joy in the art, but when she's not dancing that translates into an impressive solidity, all her movements deliberate. Her dawning awareness as the character of what is happening pairs beautifully with the direct address and voice over she provides telling the story itself. It's a tightrope and Paige executes it perfectly. Keough as Steafni Zola's friend and foil is exuberant in the idiosyncrasies of her character, and the ensuing comedy from that pairs rapturously and brutally with her victimizing of Zola and her own by the hands of X played by Colman Domingo. Domingo and Nicholas Braun(who plays Derrek Stefani's boyfriend) operate on the same large, almost operatic, wavelength of Paige and Keough, all the performances have this eclectic goofiness, this relatable but exaggerated energy, that contrasts the stark circumstances the characters are in. It's a startling and odd tapestry of tone that works in it's explosion of contradictions.

Director/co-writer Janicza Bravo is masterful in many ways, adapting a Twitter thread into a feature she's able to translate the voice of the protagonist, focus on her perspective, while opening up the world to the beautiful and bleak landscape which the characters inhabit as well as inject this kind of social media momentum, this wry reserve that allows for humor but doesn't shy away from the darkness and real danger Zola was in. The tone is another great achievement, the characters seem to be operating in this upbeat pop comedy(at least for a time) but it doesn't detract from their emotional journeys, there's also a mystery element, unraveling what is actually happening and unspooling the various motives and ploys on display, and finally there's almost this documentary-style unflinching look at the grit, the reality of the what's happening. There are also numerous editing sequences and flourishes that convey this editorial kind of magical realism, with freeze frames and voiceover and one bravura sequence where the film pauses completely and Stefani's version of the story is told. Another stunning sequence is when Zola has helped Stefani with her sex work profile and there's a montage of her various johns that simultaneously honors sex work, shows the laughable grotesqueries of her customers(flappy dicks and all), and conveys the steep cost to Stefani and by proxy Zola(who is present throughout). The soundtrack/score is also impressive a melodic pairing of diegetic and non-diegetic songs, as well as simple diegetic sounds that at times serve as score. Bravo's success in every aspect of the production is kaleidoscopic.

A stunning, rapturous, at times difficult film that delivers the contagious exuberance of a folk tale cut with modern emotion and reality.

Currently in theaters.

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