“Zola” - Film Review
Janicza Bravo’s long-awaited star of Sundance, @zola, could not feel more timely, despite the year-long delay. Adapted from the viral Twitter thread of 2015 by Aziah “Zola” King, @zola tells the story of a trip to Tampa gone horribly wrong. After a chance meeting in a Detroit restaurant, Zola (an impeccable Taylour Paige) agrees to accompany Stefani (Riley Keough), Stefani’s roommate X (Colman Domingo), and Stefani’s boyfriend (Nicolas Braun) on a trip to Tampa to earn money by dancing in strip clubs. Stefani has done this before and assures Zola that she can make really good money. What follows is a nightmare of Floridian proportions.
In lesser hands, this story of strippers, sex workers, and attempted murder would be made for laughs. That’s the version that the audience most likely would have received had James Franco remained attached as writer and director. However, Bravo treated this like the horror movie it is. The discordant soundtrack, the eerie chirps of Zola’s iPhone, the ghost-like people repeating the same actions over and over again — make no mistake, this is a horror.
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The big, looming monster in this movie? Stefani, the worst type of white woman. A woman who uses whiteness as a weapon. The personification of the way pop culture celebrates clothes or nails or accents that are stereotypical to black women, but only when a white woman wears them. Keough’s performance of this nightmare of a person is like a slow trainwreck, the kind of horrible thing you want to take your eyes off of, but you can’t. Paige, as the straight man, is the stand-in for the audience. She watches all of this unfold in front of her with a mixture of disbelief and terror. The ability of Paige to go from awe to fear to genuine humor makes her the perfect storyteller to ground this tale in reality. Not to mention, Paige is hilarious. From the subtle expressions that pass over her face to the outright comical line deliveries, Paige is a shining star.
The entire cast delivers fantastic performances. Braun builds on his Succession Cousin Greg nice-guy act and takes it to a new, chaotic level. Domingo is effortlessly cool, an undercurrent of something sinister beneath that exterior. Together with Keough and Paige, the four of them create a tense and intriguing cast of characters. The 90-minute runtime does not waste a moment. It is a thorough, self-assured look at an underrepresented corner of America.
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