A popular internet stat holds that the residents of this distracted globe send a combined 200 billion tweets per year. Hollywood’s scribes, meanwhile, struggle to compose half a dozen annual scripts unconnected to comic books, theme park rides, or other bone-weary forms of preexisting intellectual property. If, as its distributors allege, the new picture by writer-director Janicza Bravo (Lemon) is the first movie to be adapted from a viral Twitter thread, then all involved deserve applause for opening up an auspicious filmmaking frontier. Given the dearth of other ideas, they are unlikely to be the last artists to explore the new realm’s bounties.
A perfectly paced exercise in comic depravity, Zola tells the story of Aziah “Zola” King (Taylour Paige), a part-time stripper who waits tables in between stints on the pole. Trudging through a red-eyed shift in a Detroit diner, Zola serves an outgoing fellow dancer named Stefani (Riley Keough) and strikes up a provisional friendship. As often happens when a surfeit of time meets a lack of prospects, the two women hatch a scheme designed to enrich themselves with minimal effort. (Does unhooking one’s brassiere count as “work?”) Stefani, accompanied by her boyfriend and roommate, is off to Tampa to find a wealthier class of club and patron. Zola, who clearly has nothing better to do, should join her.
Originally tweet-stormed by the real-life Aziah King, the saga that results from Zola and Stefani’s temporary partnership found additional life in a 2015 Rolling Stone article before unfolding beneath the pens of Bravo and fellow screenwriter Jeremy O. Harris. In each of these tellings, what stands out is not only the degeneracy of post-Christian America but the ease with which petty immorality can blossom into misadventure of a more alarming kind. Along for the ride with miscreants whom she barely knows, Zola has no choice but to tighten her seat belt and purse her heavily painted lips. (Note her bleak expression as Stefani recounts an endless tale of an unhygienic stripper acquaintance.) By the time Stefani’s “roommate” reveals himself to be her pimp instead, Zola knows that she is in well over her head. The only question is how she will manage to extricate herself from the situation.
Played by the superb Colman Domingo and credited as “X,” Stefani’s handler is one of the three men who aid our heroines in moving the plot forward. The second, boyfriend Derrek (Nicholas Braun), is a gentle dunce whose attempts to talk Stefani out of prostitution do far more harm than good. The third, a shifty street-tough named Dion (Jason Mitchell), provides the narrative with an unimpeachable Chekhovian logic. Why introduce him in the first act if he isn’t going to go off before the finale?
Together, these men represent the conflicting winds that would blow Zola and Stefani into perilous waters. For X and Dion, the two women signify little more than revenue streams: Either one villain or the other will superintend their sexuality and control their income. For Derrek, the rescue of Stefani has become a metaphor for his own unlikely redemption. One senses beneath his concern a streak of vainglory that could easily get people killed.
Zola is not, to its great credit, a voguish paean to the merits of sex work — nor does the film imply that its female characters would be just fine if left to their own devices. Temporarily unsupervised in a hotel suite, Zola convinces Stefani to change her Backpage ad and quadruple her rates. The montage that follows, however, is among the more horrifying scenes in recent movie history, saved from unwatchability only by the visual inventiveness with which Bravo portrays Stefani and her johns.
This flair, bringing to mind both early Quentin Tarantino and the last 10 minutes of La La Land, is one reason to seek out a screening of Zola. Mica Levi’s score, with its synthesizers, harps, ring tones, and dribbling basketballs, is another. Yet soaring above it all is the work of Domingo (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom), whose turn as the fascinating, menacing X may well prove to be the supporting performance of the year. An enigmatic tyrant with as many accents as guns, X dominates the proceedings so thoroughly that his moments off-screen can feel like something of a letdown. Paige and Keough are quite good as lowlifes brought to their wits’ ends by events that are increasingly beyond their control. Domingo, as their tormenter, is excellent.
Like its tonal forebear Spring Breakers (2012), Bravo’s film is clever enough to recognize that debauchery and long run times do not go hand in hand. An 86-minute production that feels even shorter, Zola doesn’t wrap up its story so much as it simply ceases to tell it. Among its final shots, as its characters hurtle from one debacle to another, is an image of its lead in all her annoyance, anxiety, and justifiable self-reproach. She got herself into this mess, after all. Would it be too much to hope that she’s learned something?
Graham Hillard teaches English and creative writing at Trevecca Nazarene University.
