movie review of zola

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If you were on Twitter on October 27, 2015, you probably became aware of an epic Twitter thread unfolding in real time, going viral at the speed of light. The thread was by a woman named A’Ziah King (aka "Zola") and started with four pictures of Zola and another woman, preening for selfies, with the comment: "Y'all wanna hear a story about why me & this bitch here fell out???????? It's kind of long but full of suspense." She wasn't kidding. Over the course of the next 148 Tweets, Zola recounted a tale of taking a spontaneous road trip to Florida with a woman named Jessica, hoping to get some lucrative stripping gigs. But then Zola found herself roped into a crazy whirl of sex work, pimps, guns, not to mention a dude falling off a balcony. The whole thing was a cliffhanger, with thousands of people waiting for the next "dispatch," but why the thread really grabbed everybody's attention was Zola's voice . "I was like ... I REALLY gotta go home y'all. Sorry to kill the mood but I cant take no more of this." "I leave & go down to the pool. I mean, I am in Florida!" She is a born storyteller.

In what is probably a first, that Tweet thread has been adapted into a film, directed by Janicza Bravo , with script co-written by Bravo and Jeremy O. Harris (who wrote the Tony-nominated Slave Play ). The original thread unfolded with a propulsive and profane energy, gossipy and funny, even during the most terrifying chapters. There were disturbing undertones, mainly from Zola's horror of being lured into a situation she hadn't signed up for, but she zips onto the next thing, a wise-cracking survivor. "Zola" hews closely to the original thread (why fix what isn't broke?), and often quotes it directly. But what Bravo has done that is most essential is capture the energy of Zola's voice, and the unique qualities of her perspective. There are many things this tale is, but there are also many things this tale isn't , and Bravo recognizes the distinction.

When Zola ( Taylour Paige ) meets Stefani ( Riley Keough ), while waiting on her at a sports bar (the original was a Hooters), there's an instant connection. You could say that Stefani "love bombs" Zola, overwhelming her with compliments. Stefani is clearly a mess (later in the film, Zola yells at her: "YOUR BRAIN IS BROKE!") and her exaggerated accent is put-on and culturally-appropriated in the extreme, but there is something irresistible about her too. When Stefani invites her to come to Florida for a good stripping gig, Zola thinks it might be fun, even though it's a little early in their friendship to go on a "hoes trip". However, when Stefani picks Zola up the next morning, Zola is dismayed to see two other people in the car, Stefani's "roommate" known only as "X" ( Colman Domingo ) and Stefani's hapless jealous boyfriend Derrick ( Nicholas Braun ). When Stefani admits to Zola that X "takes care" of her, Zola knows the score. He's a pimp, and not only that, he plans to set them both to work the minute they hit Florida. The red flags were everywhere from the jump—watch the look on Paige's expressive face when Stefani keeps calling her "sis"—but Zola figures she can handle it.

It's hard to imagine another filmmaker doing what Bravo does with this material. Her style is very free, very open, while remaining specific and crystal-clear. (Seek out her first short film "Eat," starring Brett Gelman and Katherine Waterston . It has everything: atmosphere, suspense, character development ... and it's only 14 minutes long. All of her short films are like this. Bravo emerged from "Eat" fully-formed as an artist.) Bravo perceives the dark undertones, but she also understands the initial exhilaration. This story needs both. There's a sequence when they all jam out to Migos' "Hannah Montana" in the car, shouting the lyrics in unison, filming each other, gyrating in their seats, exhilarated by the sun and sand and blue water zipping by outside, as they enter the freedom of anarchic anything-goes Florida. (This is then undercut by slow shots of what they see outside the windows: first, an enormous white cross free-standing on the road-side, then a Confederate flag at half-mast, billowing in the wind. Welcome to Florida.) Social media plays a key role in the narrative, and not just because the story originated there, but because of how the characters utilize it all along the way. The sound design reflects this reality, with phone-chirp alerts punctuating the action. There are other flourishes, but they're used sparingly. Nothing clutters up the screen. Periodic freeze-frames give Zola a chance to interject her thoughts to us, her captive audience: "From here on out, watch every move this bitch make."

Bravo's sensitivity to atmosphere is everywhere apparent. A huge liquor store transforms into a surreal dreamspace, a posh hotel lobby echoes with an emptiness almost ominous, Zola, wearing a canary-yellow bikini, stands on a balcony, surrounded by the blue of night, a solitary lonely figure snatching some solitude from the craziness. There are repeat shots of dark highways, blurry stoplights, freeways and backroads, as the women are driven around Florida for their assignments, and these "road" sequences are lonely, painterly, beautiful. Zola is an experienced woman but there is an aspect to all of this reminiscent of Alice going through the looking glass. Mirrors dominate, and this is not just a facile symbolic nod, but a serious thematic choice. In one mirror sequence, the two women get ready together for their night out, putting on makeup side by side, as the mirrors proliferate their reflections, the two of them lost in a trance of self-absorption. (There's a similar sequence in " Scandal ," the 1989 film about the Profumo affair, when Joanne Whalley-Kilmer and Bridget Fonda get themselves ready for a party, in a daze of autoeroticism.) There's another sequence where Zola's image is multiplied across the screen five times over, as she murmurs, "Who you gonna be tonight, Zola?" When Stefani interjects her own side of the story (as actually happened, the real-life counterpart taking to Reddit to defend herself), there's an entire tonal shift, as well as a color-scheme shift: Stefani's world is all pink-cupcake-hues, her braids now replaced by a " Vertigo "-style updo, all classy and victimized, pulling white-woman rank on Zola, whom she claims got her into this mess.

Riley Keough is way, way out on a limb with her performance of this grotesque woman, a liar, a user, not in any way "likable" but with enough infectious charm it makes sense why Zola was initially seduced (because it was a seduction). Paige is the center of the film, though, and she holds it with a powerful grounded sense of her own worth and an insistence on remaining sane, despite the lunacy of everyone around her. Paige speaks worlds with her eyes, and it's a joy to watch her change tack on a dime (see her quicksilver no-nonsense attitude when she realizes Stefani is being taken advantage of by X). Both Domingo and Braun give funny broad performances, and X's intermittent African accent, which comes out only when he's angry, is an ongoing joke.

Perhaps the strongest aspect of "Zola" is Bravo's refusal to shy away from one of the most challenging qualities to portray in film (or anywhere else, for that matter, especially on social media): ambivalence. What is the film's attitude towards the events onscreen? What is the film's attitude towards sex work? Towards X? Towards Stefani? There are times when it seems cut-and dried. There are other times when it's not so clear. The scenes of the two women stripping are luscious and playful, but then there's the moment when a client tips Zola, murmuring that she looks like Whoopi Goldberg . The pleasure is real but so is the disgust. The sex work scenes have distressing elements, but they are also introduced by shots of a diverse array of penises. Heart emojis flower over the biggest specimen. It's not that it's complicated so much that it's ambivalent. Ambivalence is such a common experience to most human beings, and yet it's treated as a huge no-no in contemporary storytelling. People like their villains clear-cut and they like bad behavior to be signaled as "bad" with huge neon arrows. Bravo isn't interested in that kind of simplified binary, and it's the stronger film for it.

The only disappointment in all this dazzling creativity is that the ending feels almost cut off in mid-sentence. But that's a quibble. This is the kind of film that tells its story well while simultaneously showing the joy of the creative act, in Bravo's filmmaking, yes, but also in Zola's decision to take to Twitter and tell her story in the first place. A voice like hers doesn't come along every day.

In theaters now. 

Sheila O'Malley

Sheila O'Malley received a BFA in Theatre from the University of Rhode Island and a Master's in Acting from the Actors Studio MFA Program. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Film credits.

Zola (2021)

Rated R for strong sexual content and language throughout, graphic nudity, and violence including a sexual assault.

Taylour Paige as Zola

Riley Keough as Stefani

Colman Domingo as X

Nicholas Braun as Derrek

Ari'el Stachel as Sean

Jason Mitchell as Rival Hustler

Ts Madison as Hollywood

Megan Hayes as Joan

Tony Demil as Joe

• Janicza Bravo

Writer (based on the Tweets by)

• A'Ziah King

Writer (based on the story by)

• David Kushner
• Jeremy O. Harris

Cinematographer

• Joi McMillon

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‘Zola’ Review: Twitter? I Hardly Know Her!

A notorious tweetstorm arrives onscreen, starring Taylour Paige and Riley Keough.

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‘Zola’ | Anatomy of a Scene

Janicza bravo narrates a sequence from her film featuring taylour paige and colman domingo..

HI. I am Janicza Bravo, the director and co-writer of Zola. So this is probably one of our prettiest scenes. At this point in the film, Zola, Taylour Paige’s character, knows that the trip she signed up for, what she had been seduced into, is not what she was sold, right? And so her plan is to come to Florida, dance to make money. And what she realizes is that she has been sold into a sex slavery of sorts. And Colman Domingo’s character, X, is the pimp who she is working for. “What’s this for?” “Respect.” “So I can go home now?” “Nah. [LAUGHS] I’m gonna need you to do what you did last night.” “I appreciate your confidence in me. But I came to dance.” So the movie’s pretty claustrophobic. A lot of the work that the women do and a lot of our time in Florida, in Tampa, is inside. And this is one of our first times that we get to be outside, and we get to luxuriate in the outdoors. “May I, uh—” “She don’t need any help.” “—help you, miss?” “She doesn’t need any help.” “I’m good.” But the thing that happens inside of the scene is in contradiction of this kind of freedom and this openness. At least the first third of the movie or a portion of the movie you really feel like Zola is in charge of her own story. And at a certain point, X takes it out of her hands. And so she has this room to go have this moment at the pool, and then he literally enters and blocks her sunlight and reminds her of who is in control of her voice. What I’d hoped here is that the scene would remind us that some of our relationship to sex work/sex slavery is something that we have the privilege of getting to experience at an arm’s-length distance. And here it tells us that it’s actually right next to us. And it’s whether or not we choose to see it.

By A.O. Scott

“Is it as good as the book?” is a question movie critics often hear, whether the book in question is a Harry Potter adventure or something more highbrow. “Is it as good as the tweets?” is a new one, at least for this movie critic, and in the case of “Zola” it opens a surprisingly interesting line of inquiry. Tweets may or may not be literature, but as a storytelling medium Twitter has its own integrity, a rhythm and aesthetic that pose distinctive challenges for film adaptation.

That’s what interested me, anyway. I should also note that this is a movie about strippers.

Directed by Janicza Bravo (“Lemon”) from a script she wrote with the Tony-nominated playwright Jeremy O. Harris (“Slave Play”), “Zola” is adapted from a thread that galvanized Twitter back in 2015, when it was somewhat less dominated by expressions of political contempt and moral self-righteousness than it is now. There was more room for crazy stories, and on Oct. 27 of that year, A’Ziah King started posting the profane, hair-raising, occasionally hilarious tale of an ill-starred excursion to Florida that involved sex work, gun play and a highly problematic frenemy . (Her thread became the subject of a Rolling Stone article , which “Zola” also credits as a source.)

“So I met this white bitch at Hooters,” King (who also goes by Zola) wrote in the second tweet. “I was her waitress!” In the movie, the name of the restaurant has been changed, and the customer, called Stefani, is played by Riley Keough with hair extensions and a slightly demented smile. Zola, played with more reserve by Taylour Paige, is charmed by Stefani’s bubbly manner and nonstop patter — heart emojis fly across the screen to affirm their bond — and agrees to an impromptu weekend jaunt to Tampa.

It’s mostly a business trip. Stefani and Zola are both exotic dancers — Zola practices on a pole in the living room of her apartment — lured by the money that supposedly rains down on the strip-club stages of the Sunshine State. For company they have Stefani’s boyfriend, Derrek (Nicholas Braun, familiar to “Succession” fans as Cousin Greg ), a sweet-natured doofus with a chinstrap beard and a backward baseball cap. Their driver is a man Stefani introduces as her roommate. He switches accents and names — the final credits identify him only as X — and because he’s played by the endlessly inventive and unnervingly charismatic Colman Domingo you may find yourself watching him closely and hoping he’ll be back soon whenever he steps away.

Zola has other reasons for keeping an eye on him, and for wishing him out of her life altogether. Stefani may be unpredictable and not entirely honest, but X, who turns out to be in charge of the weekend’s activities, operates at a whole different level of cunning and menace. He also turns out to be Stefani’s pimp, with a gun-toting girlfriend (Sophie Hall) waiting in Florida. The moneymaking agenda soon switches from stripping to prostitution, and Zola is dismayed to find her services advertised on the internet alongside her friend’s.

She draws a firm boundary, refusing to turn tricks and instead becoming Stefani’s assistant manager and de facto madam — setting the prices, choosing the selfies, greeting the johns and collecting the cash. “Zola” is emphatically not the story of its protagonist’s victimization, even though she is duped, prevented from going home and sometimes threatened with violence. Rather, she is the incredulous witness, the wise narrator and the resilient hero of what might otherwise have been a sad little anecdote.

Is it more than that? Yes and no. There is something disingenuous about this movie, a refusal to name the stakes it’s playing for, as if the filmmakers aren’t sure how much or what kind of fun they want the audience — or the characters — to have.

Bravo and Harris keep things moving briskly, orchestrating plot turns and digressions in a way that both captures the stop-and-go rhythms of Zola’s experience and replicates the syncopated, splintered attention of Twitter itself. At one point, they pop in an alternative movie-within-the-movie, culled from Reddit, that offers Stefani’s perspective, with Keogh in sober clothes and a chaste ponytail pretending to be the wronged innocent. The sex is conveyed in cinematic shorthand, including a montage of client genitals with appropriate commentary.

The original Twitter thread, laden with exclamation points and smileys, aimed to provoke amazement and incredulity. Wait, what? No way! “Zola,” for all its displays of candor and bravado, both intellectualizes and literalizes what might have happened that weekend, and mutes the blunt poetry of King’s voice. The plot points and images are offered up like term-paper prompts, inviting you to reflect on some of the urgent and fashionable topics of the day: white privilege; cultural appropriation; the male gaze; girl-boss feminism; sexual labor and commodity fetishism under late capitalism; Florida, man.

And maybe also that English-class staple: the unreliable narrator. It’s not that Zola is a liar — we see what she sees, and there’s nobody else here we can trust — so much as that the movie is reluctant to explore her motives and emotions, which has the effect of undermining her credibility. Paige occasionally shows a flicker of fear or a flare of impatience, but the insistence on Zola’s stoical, capable good sense puts other, potentially messier possibilities out of reach. How did she fall for Stefani’s con? Did she want anything from the experience besides money?

Those questions imply judgments, and “Zola,” though it gestures in the direction of satire and Florida noir, lacks a consistent tone or point of view. There is plenty of drama, and some hard feelings — mostly courtesy of Derrek, who is jealous, anxious and altogether pathetic — but not a lot of intrigue or honest emotion. I guess if that’s what you’re after, it’s best to stick to Twitter.

Zola Rated R. Uh, yeah. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters.

A.O. Scott is a critic at large and the co-chief film critic. He joined The Times in 2000 and has written for the Book Review and The New York Times Magazine. He is also the author of “Better Living Through Criticism.” More about A.O. Scott

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“Zola,” Reviewed: A Twitter Thread Takes an Ingenious and Audacious Cinematic Form

By Richard Brody

Few movies as action-filled as Janicza Bravo’s “Zola” are directed with such a heightened and refined sense of style. In that respect, “Zola” is similar to the films of Wes Anderson , but Bravo outdoes even Anderson in one regard. For Anderson, style is a test of character—whereas for Bravo, who also puts her protagonist through severe tests, style extends into a vision of the storytelling process itself. As a title card near the beginning explains, “Zola” is based on a real-life, “mostly true” thread of a hundred and forty-eight tweets posted on October 27, 2015, by A’Ziah (Zola) King, and the film’s combination of unhinged action and rarefied realization brilliantly reflects its distinctive origin without mimicking it. The eponymous protagonist’s point of view is ingeniously embodied in the movie throughout (with one audacious exception). What’s all the more extraordinary is that, while constructing such a self-aware story, Bravo keeps the movie loose and free, jumpy and jazzy, filled with hip-hop and doo-wop, spangled with effects and with high-wattage acting. At the same time, she ardently and unflinchingly pursues a virtually documentary-like portrayal of the story’s surroundings. For all its exuberance and energy, the film is a horror story of deception, exploitation, and coercion.

The film begins with a baroque flourish, as two young women, one Black and one white, sit side by side in a lurid fluorescent glow before an intricate bank of mirrors that multiply their reflections vertiginously. As they languidly do their makeup in synchronized gestures, the Black woman, Zola (played by Taylour Paige), breaks the fourth wall and addresses the camera with remarks that the white woman, Stefani (Riley Keough), apparently doesn’t hear: “You wanna hear a story about how me and this bitch here fell out? It’s kind of long, but it’s full of suspense.” The rest of the film is a flashback from this opening scene, starting with the day that Zola and Stefani first meet, at the restaurant where Zola is working as a waitress—Zola is waiting on Stefani, who talks to her with rapid patter and rude candor (beginning with compliments about her “titties”). A quick series of decorative and rhapsodic scenes show the instant bonding of the two women, with special effects involving candy-colored fantasy interjections and subtitles. Both also pole dance, and, the very next day, Stefani invites Zola to come with her on a road trip to Tampa, where they can dance at a strip club for quick money, and Zola impetuously accepts.

The first sign of trouble comes as soon as Zola gets into the S.U.V. with Stefani, her boyfriend Derrek (Nicholas Braun), and another man, the car’s driver (played by Colman Domingo), whom Stefani introduces as her roommate but is actually her pimp. Soon after the foursome get to Tampa, Zola discovers that the pimp has marketed both her and Stefani online as prostitutes; when Zola declares that she wants no part of it and tries to leave, he threatens her with violence. (It’s a spoiler to mention his name, which is only revealed late in the film; IMDb calls him “X.”) In the course of the action, Zola highlights X’s deceptions and Stefani’s own part in the ploy (though she may have been coerced by X to lure Zola in)—and Bravo, in a series of sharp, quick interventions, uses freeze-frames as devices to set up Zola’s retrospective first-person address to viewers, calling attention to the web of misdeeds in which she’s been caught. (Unlike many more ordinary movies that, in the interest of suspense, withhold from viewers what the protagonist knows, “Zola” calls viewers’ attention to crucial information that was withheld from her and makes clear what she learned and when she learned it.) Under pressure and in the face of danger, Zola discovers inner resources of courage and keenly practical insights (plus the boldness to put them into action) that both maintain her own boundaries and help Stefani liberate herself from X’s yoke.

The substance of “Zola” is fiercely earnest, the situations alternately depressing and bewildering and menacing, yet the tone of the movie remains predominantly bright and comedic. The antic drama bounces and swings with the hyperbolic energy of a tall tale, one that has grown giddy with wonder and whimsy from the sheer fact of Zola’s having lived to tell it. (The movie is largely factual, though the names of characters other than Zola have been changed; Bravo co-wrote the script with Jeremy O. Harris, and they also relied on a report by David Kushner, in Rolling Stone , about Zola and the experiences that she describes and also somewhat embellishes.) The movie is more than a coming-of-age story, in which Zola brilliantly and bravely improvises in the face of trouble—it’s also a coming-of-voice tale in which she discovers her creative identity by telling the story in the form of her Twitter thread. Zola’s speaking voice is sharply etched, logical, and decisive in her dialogue and in voice-over interjections; her narrative voice gets an even keener cinematic embodiment in the styles and the details of the movie’s images, sounds, and, for that matter, performances.

Bravo relies on extended and often symmetrical takes, not with the geometrical severity of Anderson’s compositions but looser, with a hint of spontaneous discovery and its built-in imbalance. She emphasizes the graphic side of gestures and poses, movement and mounting tension, at a distance, along with the space-filling power of the actors’ presences and distinctively heightened vocal inflections. She delights in the expressively ornamental, as in a scene of wondrous, imaginative simplicity in which the foursome emerge from the car in the parking lot of a depressingly dingy motel. Two kids are playing basketball there, on the building’s second-floor walkway, and the ball’s bounces, obsessively repeating the pattern of two with a pause, serve as the scene’s on-camera music score, trouncing the power of any song that might have been overlaid on the soundtrack.

“Zola” is in part a road-trip movie, and Bravo thrills to the sheer sight of the road, and captures the curiosity and the suspense of travel. Yet some of the sights seen along the way offer far more than local color, as when the travellers are approaching Tampa, and Zola, looking out the window, sees a big Confederate flag flying roadside (and Bravo holds on to that image at rueful length, panning to follow it out the rear window). Later, in Tampa, during a dour trip to some dubious johns, Zola, Stefani, and Derrek all see a police siren far down the road, and the sound of the encounter—officers brutalizing and Tasering a man on the ground who is begging for mercy and crying for help—dominates the soundtrack for a long time, as the S.U.V. approaches and Bravo keeps the camera staring hard at the attack, once again panning as they approach and holding the sight onscreen through the vehicle’s rear window for an agonizingly long time.

What follows is another scene of violence—the violence of predatory men inflicted on women—which is the ambient constant of “Zola.” It’s here that Bravo delivers her most extreme, most daring, most scathingly sardonic vision of the world of sex work. As Zola tries to extricate herself from X’s coercion and to help Stefani benefit from it in ways that X would never allow, a montage shows the johns’ flabby bodies and stubby penises, the desperate heavings in pursuit of pleasure, and the grotesqueries of sex-faces, in a series of vertically sliding images, separated by black lines, that suggest a live-action parody of the erstwhile instructional medium of the filmstrip. It’s a vision of rubes overpaying grossly for a groaning but underpaying for what it costs the women who provide it. In an appalling scene of menacing violence, Zola becomes sharply aware of Stefani’s sufferings, and Bravo both finds an understatedly anguished visual correlate for the shattering moment and makes it the dramatic pivot for a dazzling sequence in which Stefani tells her own side of the story, hyperbolically, insultingly, with racist undertones—and yet with a desperate pathos that Bravo doesn’t miss. It’s Stefani’s effort to recover her own story and her own agency in the face of brutal dependency, gaslighting, and fear.

Race is a crucial part of “Zola,” in surprising and revealing ways. As much as Bravo finds joy in the display of extravagant acting, and in the characters’ exaggerated behavior and loopy mannerisms, she also subjects these flamboyant excesses to severe, insightful scrutiny. Zola’s exemplary gesture is the embittered glower of disappointment with those who surround her, and Paige radiantly conveys her dynamic thoughts in concentrated repose, giving Zola a trenchant, plain, and affirmative voice that cuts through the tangle of deceptions, a focussed gaze that takes in all the idiosyncratic, implausible, infinitesimal details that she’ll eventually bring to light. As played by Domingo, X is a master manipulator whose scheming extends to his very identity and gives rise to a weird, memorable stray moment (one of many), when his name is finally heard, and he forces his unwilling minions to chant it chorally. Braun’s reedy, uninflected voice meets at the crossroads of Nicolas Cage and Michael Cera, and he brings real poignance and physical comedy to the blundering ignorance of his puppy-like, uninhibitedly frenzied affection. Stefani, in her traumatized exuberance, her victimized victimizing, speaks in a seemingly unintentional series of stereotypes of Black English, and her mannerisms, which fly from the start like a red flag, convince Zola of a kinship that instead proves treacherous.

Zola doesn’t say a word about Stefani’s dubious appropriation; she expresses exasperation early on and then merely becomes inured to it. Yet the very substance of the film, filtered through Zola’s perceptions, indicates a dismay that becomes increasingly tolerant and loses its judgmental edge as she observes the cruel servitude to which Stefani is subjected. With its hectic action and interventionist effects, its frenzied performances and behavioral quirks, the luridly exuberant design and the coolly analytical hum of its incisive images, “Zola” is, from start to finish, both a teeming refraction of a single mind in overdrive and a sharply discerning vision of a world grasped under pressure. The movie exemplifies the power of the cinema—even the popular and commercial and invigoratingly swingy cinema—to reflect the inner life through imaginative methods that, at the same time, reveal the fractures and complexities of public life with probing and passionate insight.

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Zola review – pulp-factual viral tweet becomes an icily slick urban thriller

Aziah ‘Zola’ Wells’s viral story of her crazily dangerous 2015 trip to Florida in search of pole-dancing money is brought to the screen with seductive comedy

I n 2015, a part-time dancer from Detroit called Aziah “Zola” Wells went viral with a cheeky Twitter thread purporting to tell the pulp-factual tale of her recent, crazily dangerous road trip to Florida with someone called Jessica, whom she’d only just met. This woman had persuaded Zola there was big money in pole-dancing for rich clients in Tampa, but Zola had to share the car with Jessica’s creepy boyfriend and even creepier pimp, and soon it was clear that Zola was going to have to do much more than dance. She was in way over her head.

Or was she? Followers of Zola’s posts loved them at least partly for how outrageously unreliable they were: Zola was clearly embellishing, or pre-emptively giving her side of the story before Jessica did the same. Now this has been turned into a very entertaining lowlife crime comedy from director and co-writer Janicza Bravo, a film that preserves the fishy flavour of the online original – if perhaps only semi-intentionally – and has interesting things to say about the exhaustingly performative and self-promotional world of social media.

Newcomer Taylour Paige plays the worldly and imperturbable Zola; she is working her other job in a diner when she serves a hyperactive and loquacious customer (renamed) Stefani, played with blitzingly fierce energy by Riley Keough. Stefani is a “blaccented” charmer and fast talker who persuades Zola to join her on a weekend of easy money in the sex-work-adjacent world of stripping, fanatically flattering and seducing her with endless social media posts and selfies. But then Zola is disconcerted by the two guys who are apparently coming with them in the car: Stefani’s whiny beta-male boyfriend Derrek (Nicholas Braun, the callow minor cousin from TV’s Succession) and a ferociously sinister guy without a name, who is to negotiate the women’s fee for providing extra services, played by Colman Domingo. Like Stefani, he appears to have a learned accent, as he will later frighteningly reveal.

The key question is how innocent Zola is. Did she really not know what she was expected to do? Did she really not join in with what Stefani was doing with guys in the hotel room? (The film serves up a gruesome penis montage.) And if she was so detached from all this, then how come she knew how to boost Stefani’s sex-work income? The film briefly flirts with a Rashomon-type sequence, disrespecting Zola from Stefani’s point of view, but stopping very much short of giving Stefani equal time. This is Zola’s story and the seductive comedy resides in the film inviting us to take her side, while seeing how she is withholding.

In some ways, this feels like a movie from the pre-social media 90s, introducing characters in freezeframe-voiceover; Bravo even gives us Keough caught unflatteringly in mid-blink, a visual gag pinched from Alexander Payne’s Election from 1999. But the sheer crazy energy of the movie is very addictive, particularly in the first stage of the pair’s road trip, overexcited and endlessly videoing each other to Migos’s Hannah Montana on the sound system – until Zola finds the whole thing very wearing and headache-inducing.

And the film is weirdly open-ended and unfinished in the way of real life, which is partly a function of the boasting, the unhumblebragging, the pictures-or-it-didn’t-happen social media neurosis. But Zola also manages to be an icily slick and funny Florida urban thriller in the style of Carl Hiaasen, carried with great deadpan style by Paige.

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'Zola' Takes A Twitter Thread And Turns It Into A Fever Dream On Film

Aisha Harris

Taylour Paige stars as the on-screen incarnation of Zola. A24 Films hide caption

Taylour Paige stars as the on-screen incarnation of Zola.

There are eyes, and then there are Taylour Paige's eyes.

In Zola , a crackling, absurdist road trip movie inspired by a crackling, absurdist Twitter thread, the camera's gaze is frequently drawn to the bodily form – a stripper's smooth, exposed curves; a man's languid, exposed junk; lips being painted a deep cherry red; long, slender fingernails clinking against a window.

But then there are Paige's eyes, which convey more in a shift, squint, or roll than some performers can with their entire corporeal being. Those glances, those looks , are the delectable amuse-bouche in this feast of storytelling, and a grounding presence for the viewer amidst all the madness and weirdness that ultimately unfolds.

But hold up – insert brief freeze-frame here – allow me to back up and explain. In 2015, a Detroit waitress and exotic dancer named A'Ziah "Zola" King crafted a viral, vivid 148-tweet thread recounting a wild trip she took to Tampa, Fla. upon an invitation from Jessica, a white woman and fellow exotic dancer she'd known for exactly one day. The story involved a cast of indelible characters, including Jessica's pimp Z, a menacing dude who would suddenly possess an "African accent" during fits of rage, and Jessica's boyfriend Jarret, an awkward, pitiful guy who just wanted her to stop being a sex worker.

Yet Zola herself was undoubtedly the star of this story. From that very first opening line, accompanied by selfies of the author and Jessica together, it was obvious she has a bold personality and a spiky way with words: "Y'all wanna hear a story about why me and this b---- here fell out???????? It's kind of long but full of suspense."

And now Zola's comedy of errors has been dramatized for the screen, directed by Janicza Bravo, who co-wrote the script with Jeremy O. Harris. Their Zola wisely takes its cues from the source, hewing closely to the main plot twists and turns, sometimes quoting King's Tweets directly. Names have been changed: Jessica is now Stefani (Riley Keough), Z is now X (Colman Domingo) and Jarrett is now Derrek (Nicholas Braun). But these colorful characters build on the energy of that thread, playing even more vividly than you might have imagined them in your head.

Stefani is bombastic, spilling forth with an over-the-top "blaccent" – perhaps Keough is channeling Bhad Bhabie, the white rapper and celebrity who became known as the "Cash me outside" girl after an infamous appearance on Dr. Phil – that is at once inviting and ominous. From the get-go she seems suspect, a little too friendly and overly familiar when first encountering Zola, her waitress at a sports bar-type establishment. (Her first comment to Zola is an unfiltered compliment of her breasts.) And Zola herself seems wary of this whirlwind of a woman – again, it's all there in the eyes – but you can also see how someone like her might be seduced into traveling across the country with a complete stranger like Stefani, who promises a windfall of cash for a night or two of dancing at a club. It's because of the money, yes, but it's also because of the possibility for adventure.

Of course, if you recall the Tweets that started it all, you're aware Zola isn't so much seduced as she is bamboozled by Stefani, and once they've reached the south, things quickly go south. In the vein of plenty of movies set in Florida – especially Spring Breakers , another tale of young white women gone ratchet – there's always a sense that danger; the truly bizarre, or some combination of the two, is lurking around every corner. There's a surrealistic quality to the aesthetic, the camera's lens emitting a haze evoking both humidity and a dream-like state.

Stefani (Riley Keough) and Zola (Taylour Paige). Anna Kooris/A24 hide caption

Stefani (Riley Keough) and Zola (Taylour Paige).

Writer-director Janicza Bravo and co-writer Jeremy O. Harris find a distinct, playful rhythm in nearly every image, sound, and piece of dialogue. Text message exchanges don't appear onscreen as they would on a phone, but instead are spoken aloud by the actors in a borderline-mono-tone as they type and recite at the same time; it suggests the zombifying role technology plays in our lives even as it carves out more avenues for connection. As if mimicking re-tweet and share buttons, dialogue, imagery, and sounds are often repeated, layered side by side or intermittent. (One striking motif depicts Zola posing and preening in a hall of mirrors, her many reflections spanning the entire frame).

And as Paige's Zola narrates the adventure, she echoes the real-life Zola's written cadence, delivering some of the film's funniest moments as she reacts to her increasingly worrying surroundings. A movie like this could easily turn into a tale where the protagonist is merely a bystander along with the viewer, with everything happening to her and no sign of agency or personality in sight. But again, I come back to Paige's performance and how so much of it rides on what she does with those eyes, and not what she says. You know how there are some people who suck at making a poker face – the ones who just can't possibly suppress the expressions that stream across their face no matter how hard they try? That's Zola. During one of the movie's recurring freeze-frame moments, Zola advises us to "watch every move" Stefani makes going forward. The same should be stressed in regard to Zola, who seems to instinctively know when to sit back and observe, when to assert herself, and when she needs to be worried. It's all there on her face.

The real-life Zola was reportedly involved behind-the-scenes, approving the script and receiving an executive producing credit, a move that seems to have kept the film from the very real danger of being exploitative of King's story. It also helps that Bravo and Harris are an ideal match for this narrative, as both creators possess styles tending to revel in the discomforting and disorienting as a means of saying the quiet, horrifying parts people are not "supposed to" reveal out loud. (See Lemon , Bravo's subversive directorial debut interrogating an insidious brand of white male intellectualism; and Slave Play , Harris's polarizing, Tony-nominated Broadway debut bluntly confronting modern interracial relationships.)

These perspectives help bring Zola into a realm beyond clever Twitter adaptation, and center her point of view as an illustration of the precarity of existing as a Black woman in the world. When Zola does choose to assert herself and make her feelings known – "This is messy! You are messy!" – she's routinely dismissed and ignored by the others. It's an extreme representation of a common feeling many Black women have felt at one time or another: How you can be taken advantage of and told everything is fine when you know in your gut that it's not; can be told you're overreacting to something that's happening to you when you know you're supposed to feel this way. In fact, it's good and smart to feel this way, because that's how you preserve yourself. Zola's whirlwind dalliance with Stefani and her associates plays like a fever dream doubling as an allegory for gaslighting. It's a jolt when, at a pivotal point, she wonders aloud, "Who's looking out for me ?"

The third act stumbles a bit over typical third-act problems – how to maintain momentum and surprise after so much build amidst twists and turns? – and the ending feels to me a bit abrupt. But it's a small price to pay for entering this realm and experiencing it through Zola's eyes, in all its richness. It may have taken several years to shift from tweet to screen, but it's well worth the wait.

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• <i>Zola</i> Is a Wild Road Trip Movie That Works Against All Odds

Zola Is a Wild Road Trip Movie That Works Against All Odds

B ecause humankind will never stop inventing new forms for old stories, it was only a matter of time before we got a movie adapted from a Twitter thread . In Zola, directed and co-written by Janicza Bravo , a young waitstaffer at a Hooters-style restaurant makes a new friend who cajoles her into taking a weekend road trip to Florida. The goal is to make some quick money dancing at strip clubs, which seems forthright enough. But the ensuing adventure involves guns, sex work, a menacing pimp and a lovelorn boyfriend’s suicide attempt. And all of it really happened—or sort of happened—as recorded by a young woman named A’Ziah “Zola” King in a series of 148 tweets posted in October 2015. Each installment was a nail-biter rendered in 140 characters or less. Unsurprisingly, this prose poem of stripper life went viral.

With Zola, Bravo captures the brashness of King’s voice and turns it into a movie that works against all odds, a black comedy and crime drama that begins as a strippers’ lark and evolves into a NSFW saga of violence and sex trafficking. But Zola is also a story about platonic attraction between women. Sometimes we befriend women who are all wrong for us. We’re as susceptible to feminine magnetism as men are, even if the game doesn’t end in bed.

You can almost hear the click when Zola (Taylour Paige, recently seen in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom ) and Stefani ( Riley Keough ) meet in that restaurant: Stefani appraises Zola—and her winsome cleavage—with her hard little kitty-cat eyes. She’s both predatory and alluring, and Zola senses that she might be trouble. But who isn’t occasionally seduced by the thrill of the new? When Stefani, her hapless boyfriend Derrek ( Nicholas Braun ) and her so-called roommate (Colman Domingo) swing by Zola’s apartment to pick her up, she steps out to meet them, her stripper garb packed into neat, sensible little tote bags. She wears a satin baseball jacket over a tiny shorts outfit—she could almost be ready for church, if she just put on a longer skirt. Stefani, meanwhile, is all saucer-size hoop earrings and glitter eye shadow, a trailer-park siren who swears that everything she does is for her baby, an infant who may or may not exist.

Zola quickly susses out that Stefani’s “roommate” is really her pimp, and he plans to put the two women on the market together. Zola nixes that idea quickly, but she also gives Stefani some tips on how she can make more money from turning tricks. More enduring friendships have been built on less.

Read more reviews by Stephanie Zacharek

Zola ’s comic absurdities are entwined with its horrors in a way that almost shouldn’t work. But Bravo—who co-wrote the script with actor and playwright Jeremy O. Harris —shows a lightness of touch in navigating the story’s quicksilver tone shifts, and the movie’s two leads bring their best: Even if it’s sometimes hard to like Stefani, it’s at least easy to see where she’s coming from; her ruthlessness is a survival mechanism. The calculations she runs perpetually in her brain are a substitute for a heartbeat, and Keough, a wondrous actor, puts that energy onscreen in Starburst colors.

But the movie belongs to Paige, as a writer-in-training who probably doesn’t know she’ll eventually wreak her revenge in a tweetstorm, but who’s taking mental notes even so. At the club where she and Stefani dance on their first night of the weekend, a scrawny white hillbilly paws at her with his eyes while tossing her his idea of a compliment: “You look a lot like Whoopi Goldberg.” Zola fixes him with a blank velvet gaze, but there’s steel behind it. This is the face of a woman who’s writing her future even as she’s stuck in a temporary bummer of a present. She’ll have the last laugh, and its sound will echo long after the last tweet earns its millionth like.

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Zola Reviews

a mesmerizing stripper misadventure fever dream

Full Review | Aug 22, 2023

Zola is riveting, and the film’s rich array of cinematic techniques and performances upend convention, even if its narrative and story tend to falter.

Full Review | Jul 27, 2023

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.

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

Zola is a transformative roller-coaster ride that is incredibly entertaining, energetic, and downright fascinating.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 31, 2023

At times it can stretch the limits of imagination... however, this is a film “based” on a Twitter thread and therefore must be taking at face value... So buy the ticket. Take the wild, wild ride.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 12, 2022

Zola is the defining dark comedy of the digital age, thanks to Janicza Bravo’s daring direction and peerless performances from Taylour Paige and Riley Keough.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 1, 2022

Turning tweets and piss into a must-see movie? That's cinematic alchemy.

Full Review | Aug 13, 2022

For most of its running time, Zola is as thrilling as any big-budget superhero epic.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | May 10, 2022

A slick, thoroughly contemporary crime dramedy that also isn’t afraid to get more than a little down and dirty.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 21, 2022

Like 2016s Spring Breakers, Zola begins to wear on your nerves as this wild ride goes to some dark places. However, strong performances and an assured director make this much more than Twitter titillation.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 3, 2022

After watching the film, you'll feel exhausted from its insane rollercoaster ride - a crazy weekend trip to Florida filled with unpredictable characters and bizarro turns, yet a disarming sense of humor about itself.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 12, 2022

Paige and Keough are both stand-outs with how they handle the dramatic elements and the story's sense of humor. Even with its blemishes, Zola is wildly entertaining.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Feb 12, 2022

How could you see Colman Domingo’s performance and not think, “This guy should be nominated for Best Supporting Actor?”

Full Review | Feb 9, 2022

Its fair to say that truth is often stranger than fiction. But Zola supposes that fiction can find greater truth yet.

Full Review | Feb 3, 2022

Doesn't know what to say about its crazy.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Jan 28, 2022

Janicza Bravo and her co-scenarist Jeremy O. Harris removed it from a trash fire and turned it into a stunning work, a savage, comic B-movie about a sane woman (Taylour Paige) in a hard world...

Full Review | Jan 18, 2022

Janicza Bravo's direction is fiery, confident, and funny, pushing her actors into places that verge on comedic parody but retain their humanity; never an easy trick.

Full Review | Jan 11, 2022

An undoubtedly attractive film in terms of staging, performances and some inspired sequences, but has been a bit overrated for my taste. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 4, 2022

An energetically fun ride that has a lot to say about exploitation underneath its hyperactive exterior. Helped by committed performances and an on-point crew, Bravo hits a home run with Zola.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 1, 2022

Not for everyone, but this picture is highly entertaining in its nail-biting suspense mixed with outrageous absurdity and frank observations on sexuality and sex work.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Dec 28, 2021

Zola Review

06 Aug 2021

In 2015, A’ziah ‘Zola’ King fired out a 148-tweet thread about her messy weekend in Florida and Hollywood was clamouring for it. “Y’all wanna hear a story about how me and this bitch fell out?” King’s opening tweet declared. “It’s kind of long, but it’s full of suspense.” At 90 minutes, the film adaptation is a reasonable length, but co-writer and director Janicza Bravo uses much style and intrigue to serve up an unreliable narrator for the social media age.

The sensational embellishments of #TheStory recommended itself to the surrealist approach of Bravo, which she employed for her 2017 feature debut Lemon and again for this fever-dream escapade exposing the darker corners of US life. For as much as this is a black comedy designed to amuse and titillate, it is also a damning indictment of a society that frequently leaves women at the mercy of the whims of disreputable men.

An impactful cast maintain the film’s frenetic pace.

The film opens like a romantic fantasy. Composer Mica Levi’s fluttering harp motif evokes a butterfly-in-your-belly feel as two women fall hard for each other after a chance encounter. It’s not a sexual coupling: when Zola (Taylour Paige) meets Stefani ( Riley Keough ) at her restaurant day job, it’s clear their relationship is a sisterly connection, forged during an evening of stripping at a local club and sealed through Stefani’s repeated exclamations of “sis!” as they girl-talk into the early hours. Their language uses African-American Vernacular English that could only be articulated by writers authentically engaged in the culture. Playwright Jeremy O. Harris and Bravo fill out Zola’s story with their own whip-smart dialogue while incorporating lines from the original thread like one kinetic texting montage, peppered with smartphone swooshes and ‘ding dings’. Zola tells her new friend she would have to “fuck her man calm” in order to ease his mind before they head off on their stripping adventure, and it quickly segues into the intimate act to comic effect.

Sex is very much on the movie’s mind, but while moments on the pole visualise the women as beauteous, a striking montage of Stefani flitting between male customers thrums with farcical urgency as the romance of this weekend quickly wears off.

It’s through Zola’s eyes that we understand the increasingly fraught state of events, and where the narration might lack a deeper introspection of her motivations, Paige’s quizzical side-looks, acrylic-nailed pointing and defiant body language help to fill in the gaps. Keough, meanwhile, delivers her Blaccented honey trapper with gusto, adding countering moments of vulnerability to demand sympathy for a woman who, for all her culturally appropriating faults, is still a victim. Throw in Colman Domingo ’s manipulative, code-switching pimp and Nicholas Braun ’s reliability as the idiotic cuckold, and you’ve got an impactful cast maintaining the film’s frenetic pace. But as the weekend comes to a close, only a few meagre narrative threads remain, allowing the once pure-fire emoji of Zola’s journey to fizzle out.

Related Articles

Movies | 17 12 2021

clock This article was published more than  2 years ago

‘Zola,’ a movie based on a tweetstorm, is squirmy, sordid, stylized, sexy — and smart

In 2015, a 19-year-old Detroit dancer named A’Ziah Wells (now A’Ziah King) took to social media to process the trauma of a frightening trip she had recently taken to Florida. Her alternately horrifying and hilarious tweetstorm went viral, capturing the attention of such luminaries as Solange Knowles and Ava DuVernay. After Rolling Stone reported out the story — which King had reposted a few times, selectively embellishing and upping the humor for maximum impact — it was only a matter of time before Hollywood came calling.

So, ladies and gentlemen, it has come to pass: “Zola” has arrived as the first narrative feature film based on a series of tweets. And, despite its unconventional source material, it turns out to be surprisingly well-crafted, elevated by breathtaking central performances and the stylish, slyly knowing sensibility of director Janicza Bravo. Part road movie, part B-picture, part prurient walk on the wild side, “Zola” preserves the audacious, self-actualized voice and vulgar humor that made King’s 148 tweets such compelling reading. But Bravo and her co-screenwriter, playwright Jeremy O. Harris (“Slave Play”) inject just enough ambivalence to ensure that the audience is never entirely comfortable with a story that in other hands might have been played as a slumming summer romp.

The true story behind ‘Zola,’ the epic Twitter story to crazy to be real

“Y’all wanna hear a story about why me and this b---- here fell out?” the title character announces in “Zola’s” opening scene. “It’s kind of long but full of suspense.” What ensues is a shaggy-dog tale of friendship-at-first-sight, adventure, betrayal, greed and escalating violence. Zola (Taylour Paige) is working as a waitress when she meets a customer named Stefani (Riley Keough), and the two take an instant shine to each other. Complimenting Zola on her figure, she asks if they’ve met before; discovering that they both dance in strip clubs around town, they two exchange numbers. The next day, Zola and Stefani are on their way to Florida, with Stefani’s hapless boyfriend Derrek (Nicholas Braun) and her “roommate” X (Colman Domingo) in tow. The plan is to dance in Tampa, where they stand to make thousands of dollars over a weekend. The plan, suffice it to say, does not pan out.

Stefani, it turns out, has ensnared Zola in a far more dangerous scheme than just pole dancing; with her wide-eyed, gum-snapping stare, she exudes seductive charm, but almost everything she says is bogus. Keough delivers her lines in an affected African American patois, a virtuosic turn in which some might detect the whiff of her grandfather Elvis Presley’s music, itself a product of both organic cultural absorption and outright appropriation. But there all mentions of Presley should end. Keough comes fully, even triumphantly, into her own in “Zola,” which marks her arrival as an exceptional actress. She has played similar parts before, in the movie “ American Honey ” and the Starz series “ The Girlfriend Experience .” Here, she vaults above and beyond even those impressive turns to deliver a performance that’s fearless, funny and, as Stefani’s true complicity becomes more obvious, terrifying.

Paige, for her part, is just as adroit in balancing “Zola’s” constantly shifting tectonics of brazen sexuality, physical danger and antic comedy (most of the latter is provided by clueless, mild-mannered Derrek, who resembles a chinstrap-bearded version of Braun’s Cousin Greg character on the HBO series “ Succession ”). Indeed, she has the toughest job in “Zola,” which is becoming a still beacon of self-possession amid the manipulations metastasizing around her. After one of Stefani’s more operatic arias delivered in “blaccent,” Zola simply gives her a long, impassive look before quietly saying, “Word.” When things get more dicey, she is first a level-headed observer of the mayhem that’s looming, and then a participant determined not to let it engulf her entirely.

“Zola” has been compared to “ Spring Breakers ,” Harmony Korine’s similarly colorful portrait of debauchery set in Florida. But unlike that movie, which wobbled uncomfortably between titillation and moral panic, Bravo’s version of King’s story is sure-footed, her vision clear-eyed and genuinely risk-taking. Lovingly filming Keough and Paige as they gyrate and twerk, the filmmaker isn’t reluctant to take pleasure in their physical beauty, and their lack of inhibitions have a liberated, vicarious thrill. Although she doesn’t dismantle the voyeuristic male gaze entirely in “Zola,” she troubles it, at one point treating viewers to an amusing montage of the penises a typical sex worker might encounter of an evening, and at another interrupting Zola’s sinuous stage dance with a customer telling her she looks like Whoopi Goldberg.

Bravo has said that she drew inspiration from Hieronymus Bosch and David Lynch in conceiving the visual language for “Zola,” which arrestingly combines exploitation and art, trash and transcendence. True to the story’s origins, she uses the beeps, whistles and pings of modern-day communications to punctuate the proceedings, making sure to include King’s most wildly popular aphorisms, virtually none of which can be printed in a family newspaper. The carefully curated aesthetic extends even to “Zola’s” score, a confection of harp glissandos, composed by Mica Levi, that lend the gritty proceedings an enchanted, otherworldly air.

As surreal and darkly funny as “Zola” often is, the terror that undergirds it is never far from consciousness: In real life, Domingo’s character would eventually be arrested for sexual assault, sex trafficking, battery and other crimes (he’s still in prison).

If Bravo and Harris make sure to allow space for the viewer’s discomfort, they still prefer to cast Zola as an avatar of female agency — a tricky and even questionable calculation that threatens to turn into another form of exploitation in the name of entertainment value and feminist uplift. Squirmy, sordid, stylized and sexy, “Zola” is a disorienting movie by design. For anyone tempted simply to laugh along, remember this: Underneath a woman proudly and profanely brazening it out is a girl desperately trying to save her own life.

R.  At area theaters. Contains strong sexuality and language throughout, graphic nudity and violence, including a sexual assault. 90 minutes.

• Consequence

Zola Turns a Twitter Thread Into a Thrilling Dark Comedy: Review

Janicza Bravo turns 144 tweets into 90 vibrant minutes of gleeful anarchy

Directed by

• Janicza Bravo
• Taylour Paige, Riley Keough, Nicholas Braun, Ari'el Stachel, Colman Domingo, Ts Madison

This review originally ran as part of our Sundance 2020 coverage and has been updated as of June 2021.

The Pitch:  “Y’all wanna hear a story about why me & this bitch here fell out????????” began Aziah “Zola” Wells’ epic 2015 Twitter thread, a near-mythic tale of strippers, murder, and kidnappings that went immediately viral.

Five years later, here we are, with the first film ever derived from a series of tweets, recounting the story of how Zola (Taylour Paige) falls in with a fellow stripper named Stefani (Riley Keough), who ends up roping her into a road trip to Tampa with her boyfriend Derrek ( Succession ‘s Cousin Greg himself, Nicholas Braun) and her “roommate” X (Colman Domingo). But it doesn’t take long before Zola figures out the real score: Stefani turns out to be a sex worker “popping pussy for pennies,” with X as her unpredictably violent pimp. If Zola’s gonna survive the trip, she’s going to need to adapt and roll with the punches… or just sit back and watch the whole thing implode around her.

Pimpin’ Ain’t Easy: As you might expect from an A24 movie that adapts a sensationalist Twitter thread (Wells has since admitted that some of the grislier details were turned up to 11),  Zola is the platonic ideal of the A24 Film. All the aesthetic hallmarks are here: the grainy, 16mm photography from In Fabric ’s Ari Wagner (taking on the griminess of a ’70s exploitation film), the moody, propulsive trap-tinged score from Mica Levi , the elliptical, dreamlike editing from Joi McMillon. It’s no wonder James Franco wanted to direct this initially;  Zola thrums with  Spring Breakers energy.

Janicza Bravo , directing her second feature after Lemon ,  brings her debut’s sense of pitch-black comedy to the forefront — it’s winkingly abrasive, reveling in its characters’ larger-than-life personalities and daring you to look away from their uglier tendencies. Keough’s Stefani is the kind of Bhad Bhabie-caliber white girl who revels in popping off with a thickly appropriating AAVE accent, which hilariously doesn’t escape Zola’s notice. Braun’s Derrek is the perfect use of the actor’s lanky awkwardness, Derica Cole Washington coating him in ill-fitting streetwear and fittingly dorky chinstrap. As for X, Domingo oozes menacing charm and a thick Transatlantic baritone, until he’s tested a bit too much and X’s native Nigerian accent leaks out.

How Janicza Bravo Adapted a Twitter Thread Into Zola, 2021’s Must-See “Stressful Comedy”

Who You Gonna Be Today, Zola? But centering all of this mayhem is Paige’s stunning breakout as Zola, who expertly nails the role’s delicate balancing act of protagonist, audience surrogate, and Greek chorus. At all times, Zola is the one who recognizes the sheer fuckery of this whole situation, but is essentially threatened into compliance; even so, she manages to hold her ground against X, and even find ways to improve his and Stefani’s business. She and Keough have tremendous chemistry, such that you can tell why they might be drawn together, even as their personalities grate on the other like two like poles pushing away from each other.

What If Phones But Too Much:  Even though it takes on the trappings of a ’70s crime flick (flowery fonts and all), Zola manages to weave its social media origins into the fabric of the filmmaking itself. Push notifications invade the sound design at numerous moments, serving as everything from character motivator to narrative rimshots. Dates and times pop on screen in the Apple home-screen font, and one crucial moment comes when Zola literally mutes the movie smartphone style. It’s a film entirely cognizant of the way we interact and build our personas through social media (like the real Zola did with her thread). Bravo and co-writer Jeremy O. Harris even give Stefani her own uproarious POV-switching set piece that allows her to salvage her reputation (“I fuck with Jesus,” Keogh confidently brays).

The Verdict:  For all the (justifiable) buzz coming out of Sundance around this film,  Zola ‘s not without its faults. The script is a little too loosy-goosy for its own good, and the last 10-15 minutes are admittedly a lackluster resolution to the high-tension hijinks on display. But until that point, it’s downright thrilling to watch a film breeze through its grimly funny energy with such exuberant confidence, especially with such a new, vibrant voice in Paige. The only thing we have to worry about is: What’s the next super-long Twitter thread to get the feature film treatment? (Quick, someone turn off Seth Abramson’s phone.)

Where’s It Playing? Finally,  Zola  has hit theaters as of June 30, 2021.

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The Movie Zola Is About More Than Just a Wild Weekend Gone Wrong

By Kovie Biakolo

As the relatively new digital proverb goes, “Every day Twitter has one main character. Aspire not to be them.” And while that’s solid advice for a platform where an unmindful tweet can cause strangers to angrily appear in your mentions, sometimes being the main character has its perks. At least this is true for Aziah “Zola” Wells, whose viral 2015 Twitter thread became the greatest stripper saga of the last decade—so great that it’s now a movie:   Zola , in theaters now. 

When Wells wrote that famous 148-tweet thread in October 2015—well before we could create threads seamlessly on the platform—she was mainly trying to chronicle an amusing, if dangerous and almost unbelievable, weekend. The resulting movie tells the autobiographical story of Zola (played by Taylour Paige), a waitress and exotic dancer who embarks on a road trip to Tampa with a new friend, Stefani (Riley Keough), also a stripper, one day after meeting her. During the weekend, Stefani and Zola face wild challenges, many caused by the former’s violent pimp, X (Colman Domingo). It becomes very clear, very quickly: This is not the trip Zola signed up for.  

As in the original thread, Zola the movie depicts the freedom, intricacies, and limitations of the sex work industry, the relevancy of social media, and the fragility that can accompany fast-made friends. Opening with an iconic line from her original Twitter thread—“Y’all wanna hear a story about why me and this bitch here fell out?”—Wells found the film’s portrayal of her experience uncanny.

“I was a little taken aback with the accuracy. It kind of felt like I was back there again,” Wells tells Glamour . “And there was a lot of emotion from me because, you know, this was something that really happened.”

But she also thinks the film is an independent entity unto itself. She says watching it has helped her come to terms with the emotions she has about the experience. 

“Yes, this happened to me. But now it’s, like, a separate piece of art, right?” Wells says. “It’s, like, its own thing now. And now I can watch it and be thoroughly entertained. That’s not me. That’s Taylour. I think it helps me completely process and heal too.”

Director Janicza Bravo came onto the project in 2017 and enlisted playwright Jeremy O. Harris to complete the screenplay with her. She says when she read the thread in 2015, she knew it was a story she wanted to tell. The mood, tone, and aesthetic of the film are grandiose, and the characters are intentional caricatures: Zola, an unserious, street-smart but overconfident protagonist; Stefani, untrustworthy and unabashed in her appropriation; and X, unscrupulous in deed and desire. They are simultaneously what you imagined and what you couldn’t possibly have imagined. 

Contrasted against this is Bravo's use (or lack of use) of sound—a Twitter “ding,” the exaggerated inflection of Paige’s voiceover, and silence that forces you to reckon with the actions depicted. Bravo masterfully rearranges your expectations of Zola ; what you might think will be merely goofy, bright, and funny is actually far more potent.

“It’s a little bit of candy, and it’s a little bit of a ride,” Bravo says. “But it’s also, like, super stressful and really traumatizing. There’s a message here, and there’s politics, and you’re laughing. And you’re asking yourself, ‘Am I okay? And do I treat people well?’ And you probably don’t, and that’s fine. But walk away from this knowing that about yourself and try to do better.”

With so much packed into this film , Zola will probably leave you a bit confused, if not unfulfilled, wondering if you missed something. And that’s the brilliance of it: Now you’ll have to watch it over and over to ensure you have the full story of how, exactly, Zola and that bitch fell out.

By Emily Tannenbaum

By Jenny Singer

By Danielle Sinay

Kovie Biakolo is a writer and journalist. Follow her on Twitter @koviebiakolo . 

By Christopher Rosa

By Jessica Radloff

‘Zola’ Review: Janicza Bravo’s Tweetstorm Tornado

Virtuoso filmmaking and a pair of killer performances can't transform this wild-and-crazy escapade, in which a stripper and a prostitute wind up in over their heads, into the stuff of art.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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As Twitter is to great literature, “ Zola ” is to the cinematic masterpieces that have come before: It’s superficial and relatively thin on substance, but a whole lot shorter and funnier than, say, “Anna Karenina” or “La Comédie Humaine” — although the latter might have been a good alternate title for this hyper-stylized lowbrow satire, in which “Lemon” director Janicza Bravo turns a whirlwind weekend of sun, fun and sex work into a statement on self-respect and recognizing one’s own worth.

Rowdier than “Hustlers” and “The Florida Project” put together, but hailing from a similar place of for-hire female empowerment, “Zola” is an irreverent, sensibility-offending trip for audiences — a good many of whom may be shocked to their core — and a showcase for leading ladies Taylour Paige (in the title role) and Riley Keough (of “The Girlfriend Experience”), playing the stripper who tries to lead her astray. Inspired by an epic tweetstorm — a flurry of some 140 posts, blasted out by A’Ziah King, aka “zolarmoon,” punched up with ampersands and all-caps and more expletives than a 50 Cent song — that became a viral sensation that became a Rolling Stone story that somehow got optioned for the big screen, “Zola” lays waste to good taste as it recounts a crazy road trip in which two gals head from Detroit to Florida and shit goes south.

The real-life Zola worked in a Hooters restaurant, though the name of the joint’s been changed, as have most of the characters’. “This white bitch” (rechristened “Stefani” here) came in as a customer, probably fishing for a wing-woman to accompany her to Tampa, where her pimp planned to make a few thou. But Stefani didn’t pitch the adventure quite like that. She said there was a chance for them to get rich dancing at a bougie strip club, and Zola fell for it.

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Most likely in reference to the story’s social-media origins, a digital tweeting noise pings every so often (punctuating composer Mica Levi’s characteristically abstract, already synthesized soundscape) as if to underscore the details that were true — or else, backed by what Zola had shared on social media. Paige plays Zola with a fair sense of skepticism, pantomiming her discomfort/distrust every time she cuts her eyes or gives Stefani a glance that says, “Does it look like I was born yesterday?” Whether you call it spontaneous or naive, if the offer had been a good idea, we wouldn’t be talking about it today.

So the two women drive down, chauffeured by an ominous dude (Colman Domingo, credited as “X”), who turns out to be Stefani’s pimp, and her boyfriend “Derrek” (Nicholas Braun), an all-but-braindead enabler who keeps insisting that, whatever their arrangement, Stefani had agreed to stop prostituting herself. Zola grows increasingly wary and annoyed as she realizes the caliber of screw-ups she’s traveling with, and Keough does a masterful job of chipping away at the whatever-you-call-the-opposite-of-bromance established in the movie’s giddy opening few scenes.

Whereas sex-positive Zola seems to have a relatively healthy handle on her boundaries, as well as an understanding bae back at home, Stefani isn’t nearly as stable. Keep in mind, however, that this is how Zola describes her, further distorted by Bravo and “Slave Play”-wright Jeremy O. Harris ’ borderline-slanderous screenplay. After a demeaning night at the strip club, the two women wind up back in X’s SUV, where he informs them, with a sense of menace that cuts through the film’s otherwise-carefree tone, that he’s placed a listing on now-defunct sex-trafficking site Backpage.

From here on, “Zola” starts to feel like that long, tense sequence in the back half of “Boogie Nights” based on the Wonderland murders. Guns are involved, someone gets shot and Bravo — who, working with DP Ari Wegner, adopts a virtual arm’s-length distance from her super-saturated, larger-than-life subjects — shoves our faces in the less-glamorous side of sex work. In one scene, trapped in the hotel room where X expects them to turn tricks all night, Zola averts her eyes, but the camera lingers on what Stefani’s doing, showing a procession of partners of widely varying hygiene, age and endowment.

If that montage doesn’t earn the film an NC-17 rating, then there’s an even more troubling sequence later on, in which the two girls are forced to navigate a gang bang. “We’re not proper,” one of the boxers-clad paying clients says, and Bravo expects us to laugh, because everything in “Zola” is played for outrageous comedic effect. Perhaps that tone is where my misgivings with the movie begin. Sure, it’s fun to see a movie skewer the vapid soullessness of social media and the unregulated economy of male desire, but “Zola” ultimately rings hollow. The actors are fearless, and yet, how much do we know about these characters in the end? The answer: something of their values, but almost nothing of their lives. Despite everything we endure together, this acquaintance extends no deeper than the glitter on their faces.

At the outset, Zola describes her story as “kind of long but full of suspense,” but it’s neither. The film runs barely 82 minutes before credits, and much of the really dramatic stuff has been invented to make the adventure seem more interesting. Yes, there are moments when we genuinely fear whether the characters will make it out alive, but the movie doesn’t seem to value their safety as much as we do. What happens to their injuries? Do they ever get home? Sure, what went down was crazy, but even with all of the dramatic license (read “embellishment and exaggeration”), one doubts this was even the 10th-most-insane thing that happened in Tampa over the weekend of March 27, 2015. It’s just the one that Zola happened to tweet about, and now we all know her story.

Reviewed at Sundance Film Festival, Jan. 24, 2019. Running time: 87 MIN.

• Production: An A24 release and production. Producers: Christine Vachon, David Hinojosa, Gia Walsh, Kara Baker, Vince Jolivette, Elizabeth Haggard, Dave Franco. Executive producers: A'Ziah-Monae “Zola” King, Jennifer Konawal, David Kushner. Co-producer: Allison Rose Carter.
• Crew: Director: Janicza Bravo. Screenplay: Bravo, Jeremy O. Harris, based on the tweets by A'Ziah-Monae “Zola” King and the article “Zola Tells All: The Real Story Behind the Greatest Stripper Saga Ever Tweeted” by David Kushner. Camera: Ari Wegner. Editor: Joi McMillon. Music: Mica Levi.
• With: Taylour Paige, Riley Keough, Nelcie Souffrant, Nasir Rahim , Amelia Rose Monteagudo, Ari’el Stachel, Colman Domingo, Nick Braun, Jason Mitchell, TS Madison, Tommy Foxhill.

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'Zola' Review: The Viral Twitter Thread Becomes A Gonzo Road-Trip Movie For The Internet Age [Sundance 2020]

In 2015,  A'Ziah "Zola" King launched a Twitter thread that began with a question: "Y'all wanna hear a story about why me & this bitch here fell out? It's kind of long but full of suspense." Thus began a 100+ Tweet thread journey that went viral and chronicled a wild and crazy 48 hours involving stripping, sex trafficking, kidnapping, violence, and attempted suicide. It was too good to be true – but it was true. Well...some of it. Zola embellished several details, but  Rolling Stone reporter David Kushner caught up with her – and the other characters in her tale – and was able to confirm much of it. It was only a matter of time before Hollywood came calling.

That brings us to   Zola , a gonzo road trip movie that plays like a fever dream had by a sentient social media platform. It's crass, it's cruel, it's wild, it's often hilariously funny. Director and co-writer  Janicza Bravo takes the majority of Zola's Tweets and works them into a straightforward, though jarring, narrative. Like Zola herself,  Zola the movie takes some liberties with the truth – names are changed, and some events here just flat-out didn't happen. But the spirit of that viral thread remains intact. And what a gonzo spirit it is.

Existing somewhere on the outskirts of  Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas ,  Hustlers , Spring Breakers , and  The Florida Project ,  Zola wants to be the go-to movie for people who watch movies on their phones. It's so obsessed with capturing the feeling of an internet aesthetic that you start to wish it would ease up a bit. For instance: to keep reminding us that this entire movie is based on a Twitter thread, Bravo fills the entire movie with Twitter sound effects – and boy does that get real, old, real fast. There is one decision that works particularly well, though: rather than have the bubbles from text messages pop-up on the screen, Bravo instead has her cast simply read them out loud, and maintain the parlance, so that characters are literally saying things like "IDK" and "Heart Emoji".

Zola kicks off with a chance encounter. Hooters waitress and stripper Zola ( Taylour Paige ) waits on Stefani ( Riley Keough ), another dancer who seems immediately smitten. Zola seems to feel the same, and there's a spark between the two women that leads them to immediately share phone numbers and social media handles. Zola doesn't think too much about it, but the very next day she gets a text from Stefani inviting her on a trip to Florida. The plan: they'll hit up some clubs and make a ton of cash. Zola is game – and it's a decision she'll quickly come to regret.

Also along for the ride are Stefani's sad-sack boyfriend Derrek ( Nicholas Braun ), and Stefani's roommate ( Colman Domingo ), a charismatic but mysterious man who doesn't even give his name when Zola first meets him. It's all fun and games – at first. Everyone looks to be having a good time, but the journey takes a dark turn, starting first with Derrek being dropped off at a seedy motel, and then with Zola getting roped into tricking (or trapping, as she calls it) via a Backpage ad set up by Stefani's "roommate", who turns out to  really be her pimp, named X.

It's the performances that keep  Zola afloat. Keough can play this type of gum-snapping, slang-slinging character in her sleep, and she's quite funny as the babyish Stefani, who isn't as clueless and innocent as she makes herself out to be. But this is Paige's show. As Zola, Paige's comic timing is electric, and she brings a much-needed amount of sympathy and empathy to the proceedings. If this movie doesn't make her a huge star, something is seriously wrong.

Bravo's direction is snazzy and snappy – quick cuts, hilarious montages (like one involving the many, many men Stefani sleeps with, and their many, many penises), and a magnificent understanding of how to use sound to its full effect – witness a scene that's "scored" to the beat of kids bouncing a basketball. But  Zola also suffers from severe pacing problems. There are multiple long, pointless, and flat-out ugly shots of the back of a car driving down a road. The camera hangs far back, but the shots linger, for no good reason. Moments like this grind the flow of  Zola to a halt, and a little trimming here and there would've gone a long way.

Zola needs to walk a fine line here. It's dealing with some weighty subject matter, with sex trafficking being at the forefront of the story. Multiple scenes find Zola threatened with violence by X, and she feels like she can't escape the situation. Yet the movie also wants to be funny, and it is. The narration, pulled from Zola's Tweets but spruced up a bit, garners big laughs. But the juggling between twisted comedy and unrelenting bleakness starts to drag  Zola down, to the point where you can't help wonder why you're bothering to follow any of these characters.

If  Zola ends up being as buzzy as it's clearly designed to be, we could be entering a whole new world where more and more social media threads get snapped-up to be turned into neon-drenched flicks loaded with phone sound effects. It's up to you to decide whether or not that's a good thing.

/Film Rating: 7.5 out of 10

• Entertainment

Trust Me, Zola Might Just Be the Wittiest and Wildest Movie of 2021

If you don't already have plans to see Zola , this is your sign to make some. Based on the infamous 148-tweet thread , the film follows a Detroit waitress as she gets swept up in what becomes one of the wildest moments of her life thanks to a sex worker named Stefani and her pimp/"roommate," X. It also features Taylour Paige (Zola), Riley Keough (Stefani), Nicholas Braun (Derrek), and Colman Domingo (X) in some of the best work of their careers. While I was ready for a wild ride, I wasn't ready for a film that includes nuanced references to police brutality and right-wing Christian propaganda while telling a story that's witty, intelligent, and at times, dark. I've only seen one movie in theaters this year, and I'm glad it was Zola . If my testimony hasn't already sold you on watching the film, ahead are five of Zola 's wildest moments.

When Zola Realizes She Probably Shouldn't Have Gone on the Trip

While taking a trip with a stranger doesn't seem like something I'd ever do, the film makes it easy to see why Zola was on board with Stefani's initial plan. After all, who wouldn't want to make an easy $5,000 over a weekend? Paige's enigmatic portrayal of the titular character had me laughing, cringing, and wondering just how the f*ck she was going to make it out of her situation — even though I'd already read the initial 148-tweet thread.

Every reaction from Ts Madison's prayer for "dick" and "good credit" to watching Derrek try to interject himself into Stefani's borderline culturally appropriative story, my eyes couldn't leave Paige. I was really hooked when after the impromptu Migos sing-along, Zola just looks at her companions with wide-eyed regret. My own wide-eyed regret came after watching a parade of penises during Zola and Stefani's first hotel stay. As Zola so accurately puts it, "They started f*cking. It was gross."

When Derrek Is Allowed to Speak

I'm not going to lie: I'm not even 100 percent sure that Braun was even acting in this movie. Interestingly enough, if Derrek hadn't been included on the trip, maybe things would've worked out better for Zola and crew. It is his new friend that leads to potentially dangerous circumstances. However, nearly every time Braun speaks in character, I found myself literally laughing out loud. There's just something about the way he says "It kind of is though" to a terrible motel room and "That's not you man" to the betrayal of his Tampa buddy . Just imagine any white man ever that's tested your patience with his stupid little videos and endless questions. That's pretty much Derrek.

When Zola and Stefani's Connection Begins to Slowly Unravel

The subtitles for a short conversation between Zola and Stefani was a genius inclusion by Janicza Bravo and Jeremy O. Harris. It truly shows the magnetic connection between the two women. However, as Zola realizes that the woman she's chosen to go on a "hoe trip" with is "messier" than she could have ever expected, things start to get a bit complicated.

As Stefani begins to show her true colors, Zola figures she just needs to do whatever she can to survive the weekend. If the differences between the two weren't already clear enough, the film gives little nods to their different standards of living, including the juxtaposition between Zola's neat apartment and Stefani's chaotic living room and the bathroom scene, where Zola has clearly been drinking more water than Stefani.

When the Movie Takes a Short Tangent to Explore "@Stefani"

Much like when Jess supposedly shared her side of the story on Reddit back in 2015, Zola allows their version to tell hers. To tell this story, Stefani drops her blaccent while portraying Zola as a racist caricature. Making claims that Zola is a "jealous b*tch" and that Stefani never would've "trapped" because she's a "Christian," her account is all over the place. Luckily, her ridiculous story doesn't last long because we do not need to know what Stefani thinks. Keough, on the other hand, did a great job of making you hate Stefani just as much as Zola does by the end of the movie.

When Colman Domingo's X Makes Demands

Domingo absolutely understood the assignment when it came to portraying his frightening Zola character . I was almost as shocked as Zola is when his character, X, switches from an American accent to a Nigerian one when threatened. It truly shows that Zola has no idea who she is dealing with, and that if she wants to survive the weekend, she has to do what he says.

The circumstances he puts Zola, Stefani, and even, to an extent, his fiancée and Derrek in, are wildly dangerous with extremely high stakes. Am I glad that he was able to get Stefani away from Derrek's magic Tampa friend? Yes, because Zola does not deserve that sh*t. His laissez-faire attitude also brings about a few of the film's more memorable quotes, including the "delusions of gander" Derrek's Tampa buddy has as he begins trying to intimidate X.

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Flickering Myth

Geek Culture | Movies, TV, Comic Books & Video Games

Movie Review – Zola (2021)

December 1, 2021 by Robert W Monk

Zola , 2021.

Directed by Janicza Bravo. Starring Taylour Paige, Riley Keough, Colman Domingo, Nicholas Braun, Ari’el Stachel, Ts Madison, and Jason Mitchell.

Zola, a Detroit waitress, strikes up a new friendship with a customer, Stefani, who seduces her to join a weekend of dancing and partying in Florida. What at first seems like a glamorous trip full of “hoeism” rapidly transforms into a 48-hour journey involving a nameless pimp, an idiot boyfriend, some Tampa gangsters and other unexpected adventures in this wild, see-it-to-believe-it tale.

Based on an explosive series of 148 tweets sent by A’Ziah “Zola” King back in 2015, this engaging yet problematic production wastes no time in trying to capture the social media thread in all its gory glory on screen.

Director Janicza Bravo, writing with Jeremy O Harris, manages to get some sense out of the story that has enough weird goings on to intrigue even the more attention deficient onlookers.

However, as with many ‘viral’ stories, there is a lacking of a greater understanding of what is going on underneath the surface.

Taylour Paige as Zola conveys an alternately wry and bewildered response to the downright odd goings on. Her friend/nemesis Stefani is played with a sort of demented frenzy by Riley Keough, employing a broad kind of accent that takes a while to adjust to.

The spare story – which reads a lot better in the original tweets than it does in the film – goes along the lines of this: Zola meets Stefani while waiting at a Hooters. They hit it off and Zola’s brand new best friend tells her that she can make good money stripping over in Florida.

Zola informs her waiting partner that she’s off for the weekend, and next day gets into a car with Stefani, her slow on the uptake boyfriend (Nicholas Braun) and a mysterious ‘roommate’  referred to as X (Colman Domingo).

From there on the film is a deep dive into pulp crime activity, offset by a fairy-tale quality brought about by a dreamy visual haze and Mica Levi’s sublime musical score. The soundtrack is also injected with an incoming tweet alert effect to underline key points in the dialogue which further highlights the original source material.

The real power of the film for me was the varying trappings of truth itself. Anyone with a passing interest in the perils of social media know how easily stories can get exaggerated and reedited.

Indeed, there have been stories that the original tweets were tweaked by its author to get a greater response. It is a ‘mostly true’ story in any case, and anyone used to watching things ‘blow up’ online know that most narrators are playing to a crowd.

The micro-journalistic responses of life as we live it now is made up of all kinds of inconsistencies and shouting louder than the next user. The more follows and likes the better.

Zola is based on the original tweets and a Rolling Stone story Zola Tells All by David Kushner that followed it. The movie is at its best when it plays with the authenticity of the various stories.

One memorable scene has Stefani telling her side to camera in hilarious faux-innocence. The point being that things can be fake, but just as much fun.

There are beautiful artistic moments in the film, and the technical edits are brilliantly deployed.

One scene just before the precarious nature of the work is revealed cuts most of the audio of the main players out, leaving only the steady rhythmic beat of two youngsters bouncing a basketball around outside a building. The beat of the ball sounds out like an ominous countdown to a life changed.

Tweets and texts are also spoken to camera, bringing a stark immediacy to the picture. Unfortunately, anyone looking for a more detailed view of the emotional and psychological responses going on will largely be disappointed.

For the most part, the film works like a sort of updated Tarantino-esque pulp adventure, which is absolutely fine and good fun, until you remember that there are real people enslaved in similar scenarios to this all the time. Which may sound a bit kill-joy ish, but it’s difficult to avoid.

At points it feels uncomfortable to be looking on at the dour realities of sex work, and no matter how many weird and surreal laughs are on offer in this luridly put together production, there is always the nagging feeling that this really is not exactly funny.

While Bravo can reasonably point out that this is the challenge of the movie, the fact is, both lead characters are players in an all-too familiar sexploitation plot. The dazzling sweep of the film shows off the director’s sure management of the story, but it is mostly for glamorous effect and illusion.

While the real Zola no doubt claimed the strange story as her own, there is still the overall feeling that this is depressing rather than celebratory. No matter how dark the humour is, how many laughs can you really expect to get from sex-trafficking?

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★

Robert W Monk is a freelance writer and film critic.

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A stripper named Zola embarks on a wild road trip to Florida. A stripper named Zola embarks on a wild road trip to Florida. A stripper named Zola embarks on a wild road trip to Florida.

• Janicza Bravo
• Jeremy O. Harris
• A'Ziah King
• Taylour Paige
• Riley Keough
• Nicholas Braun
• 155 User reviews
• 124 Critic reviews
• 76 Metascore
• 10 wins & 40 nominations

• (as Nick Braun)

• Stefani's Baby

• (as Tony Demil)
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia Based on a true story told in a popular twitter thread containing 148 tweets written by Detroit waitress A'Ziah "Zola" King in October 2015. The story quickly went viral, garnering the recognition of people such as Missy Elliott , Solange and Ava DuVernay . About a month later, Rolling Stone magazine published an article interviewing people involved in the story.
• Goofs Zola has said that the scene with the rival pimp being shot never happened. She made it up to embellish her story and make it seem more interesting.

[first lines]

Zola : You wanna hear a story about how me and this bitch here fell out? It's kinda long, but it's full of suspense.

• Connections Referenced in WatchMojo: Top 10 Movies That Will Blow Your Mind in 2020 (2020)
• Soundtracks But Not For Me Written by Johnnie Louise Richardson Performed by The Clickettes Published by Idea Music Courtesy of Resnik Group By arrangement with Gravelpit Music on behalf of Capp Records, Inc. and Music Supervisor, Inc.

User reviews 155

• Jul 22, 2021
• How long is Zola? Powered by Alexa
• June 30, 2021 (United States)
• United States
• Official site
• Ranch House Grill - South Tampa, Florida, USA (Restaurant)
• Killer Films
• Ramona Films
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• Jul 4, 2021

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 26 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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Conflict, cuts and identity crises: how film festivals are navigating choppy waters, breaking news.

‘Emilia Pérez’ Review: Jacques Audiard’s Musical Is Crazy, But Also A Marvel – Cannes Film Festival

By Stephanie Bunbury

Stephanie Bunbury

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On paper, it looks mad as a loose wheel. A largely Spanish-language musical about a Mexican druglord having a sex change, featuring onetime Disney teen star Selena Gomez as a gangster’s wife: nobody could deny director and writer Jacques Audiard ’s gi d dy determination to do something different, but how could Emilia Pérez be anything but a hot mess? But here is it is on the screen, a musical marvel. Of course it’s crazy, but Audiard has set up his impossible conjuring trick and made it work.

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‘Emilia Pérez’ Review: Jacques Audiard’s Musical Is Crazy, But Also A Marvel – Cannes Film Festival

Enter Manita Del Monte, the leader of a criminal cartel, for his future life. Manita has unthinkable amounts of money stashed in Swiss bank accounts but still likes to hang with his homies, drinking on old car seats somewhere out in the desert while his beloved children dance with his posse of killers. Nobody would mistake him for a woman. His voice is rasping, his beard disheveled and his approach to recruitment strikingly direct: he has his hombres put a bag over Rita’s head and kidnap her. Discretion must be enforced, given Manita’s incendiary secret. He has always wanted to be a woman. Now, having seen how resourceful Rita is in court, he wants her to help set him up with a sex change.

RELATED: ‘Emilia Pérez’ Starring Zoe Saldaña And Selena Gomez Scores 11-Minute Ovation At Cannes World Premiere

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Audiard has always worked very deliberately across genres; he followed the urban thriller The Beat My Heart Skipped with Rust and Bone , a relationship drama, then took on the Western in The Sisters Brothers . In 2016 he won the Palme D’Or with Dheepan , a sympathetic slice of social realism about illegal immigrants. The musical is a deceptively rigorous form, trammeled by its inherent artificiality. People don’t usually burst into song in the street, still less while discussing possible procedures at a Thai plastic surgery clinic. Emilia even manages to muster a song from beneath several layers of post-operative bandaging.

None of this ever seems ridiculous, however, because Audiard leans into its conventions; rather than bending his provocative story to fit it, he bends the form itself. From the very beginning, when we see the lights of Mexico City dissolve into fairy lights around the sombreros of a mariachi band, there are visual evocations of the glitter and glamor of musical theatre; we often find ourselves gazing at the stars, a brief respite from the drama. Dance numbers might begin in the office, continue in a black neutral space as the scenery magically fades away, then return to the real. Songs are delivered in snatches rather than as whole numbers, merging into dialogue and often barely sung at all. The sparkle never outshines the essential seriousness of the subject.

That subject is a tragic one. Even with a new face, body, identity and sense of mission, Emilia Pérez will never leave her other selves behind. The performances encompass that thematic depth. Saldaña brings warmth and a sense of solidity to Rita, guiding us through the plot’s giddying excesses; Karla Sofía Gascón is appropriately larger than life as both the monstrous cartel boss and as Emilia, a born-again woman with the proud demeanor of a ship’s figurehead. Gomez, as her cast-off wife determined to live her best life, brings that unmistakable Disney zing. The greatest plaudits, however, go to Jacques Audiard. It may be too soon to call the Palme d’Or with a week of the Cannes Film Festival left to run, but Emilia Pérez looks very much like a winner.

Title: Emilia Pérez Festival: Cannes (Competition) Director: Jacques Audiard Cast: Adriana Paz, Edgar Ramirez , Mark Ivanir, Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez Sales agent: The Veterans Running time: 2 hr 10 min

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‘emilia pérez’ review: zoe saldaña, selena gomez and the divine karla sofia gascón light up jacques audiard’s fabulous queer crime musical.

A Mexican drug lord enlists the help of a lawyer to undergo gender-affirming surgery in the latest from the French director of 'A Prophet,' 'Rust and Bone' and 'Dheepan.'

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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Movies that take their title from a female protagonist’s name — from Mildred Pierce and Stella Dallas through Norma Rae to Vera Drake and Jackie Brown — instantly claim that woman’s rightful place at the heart of a story, often depicting struggle and sacrifice but also resilience and strength of character. The same applies to Jacques Audiard ’s bracingly original crime musical Emilia Pérez , even if the woman herself doesn’t show up until some way in, when she emerges from the unlikeliest of cocoons.

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All this is wrapped seamlessly around a sensitive core exploration of gender identity and trans liberation, channeled through a magnificent performance by Karla Sofia Gascón, a wonderful discovery in the title role. The warmth, the joyous self-realization, the complexity and authenticity, perhaps even the purification that illuminate her characterization no doubt owe much to the parallels in the Spanish star’s life — in her own words, she was an actor before becoming an actress, a father before becoming a mother.

Audiard makes a case that the movie musical is the only genre that could have contained all this, enlisting nouvelle chanson artist Camille to write the songs and her partner Clément Ducol to compose the score.

The soundtrack is a synth-heavy melange that can be ambient or anthemic, intimate in its excavation of inner feelings or defiantly declarative, at times leaning into rap. Any musical featuring a song called “La Vaginoplastia” is not playing it safe. Belgian modern dance choreographer Damien Jalet complements the songs with suitably eclectic moves for solo performers or groups.

Her talents seem to have been recognized, however, by a mysterious caller with a low growl of a voice, offering her a chance to become rich. After overcoming her hesitation, Rita goes to the designated meeting point and gets bundled into a car with a black bag over her head.

She’s terrified to find herself sitting face to face with notorious cartel leader Manitas Del Monte (Gascón), who has wiped out most of the competition in the synthetic drug trade and made strategic political alliances but also enemies. Manitas tells Rita that once she hears his plan there’s no going back.

Fearfully agreeing, she’s startled to learn that the sweaty criminal with the stringy hair, scruffy beard and mouthful of gold teeth has been receiving female hormone therapy for two years and is ready to complete the gender-affirming process. Rita is tasked with flying all over the world to find the best surgeon while maintaining absolute discretion. Not even Manitas’ wife Jessi ( Selena Gomez ) or kids can know.

Rita becomes the point person in the plan, brokering a meeting with top surgeon Dr. Wasserman (Mark Ivanir) and then, once Manitas’ staged death makes the news, whisking the legitimately grieving Jessi and their children off to Switzerland for their safety, with new identities. That completes Rita’s job, leaving her with a hefty sum of money deposited in international accounts.

With Emilia’s true self released and her criminal past behind her, the movie takes a number of interesting swerves, some funny, some stirringly romantic and some alarming.

First up, she puts herself in Rita’s path again, turning up in London where the former lawyer is living a well-heeled existence. Their first meeting as two women is a delightful scene, with Rita at first failing to recognize the elegant lady speaking to her in Spanish. Emilia has realized she can’t live without her children so she assigns Rita to bring Jessi and the kids back to Mexico City to live in her luxury compound. Emilia passes herself off as a cousin of Manitas who promised to take care of them.

Next, an encounter in a café with a woman handing out flyers about her missing son opens a window to atonement, helping families of the country’s thousands of desaparecidos to find closure. Rita tries to extricate herself and get back to London, but ends up serving as Emilia’s strategic partner in an enterprise that takes on a life of its own. There’s a pleasing symmetry in the extent to which Rita’s invaluable contribution is acknowledged, in ways it never was by male bosses.

It’s through her charity work that Emilia, in another standout scene, meets the aptly named Epifania (Adriana Paz), an abused wife who helps her rediscover the rewards of love and tenderness and desire.

It’s highly probable that some will find the film too changeable to feel cohesive. But the very fluid nature of Audiard’s storytelling is a superb fit for the emergence of Emilia from a half-life into a wholeness in which she can finally know who she is. Gascón conveys this gradual adjustment with such gentle poignancy and generosity of spirit that it’s easy to see why Rita seems able to forget about the person Emilia was before.

Saldaña deftly guides Rita through her own less dramatic changes as she steps up to tackle problems large and small, while building a sisterhood with Emilia. Considering that their association started out as that of a drug kingpin with a hired hand, a real connection develops and it’s amusing to watch Rita keep Emilia in line. After being reunited with her children, albeit in the guise of a previously unknown relative, Emilia is so effusive in her affections that Rita curtly reminds her, “You’re their aunt, not their mother.”

Ramirez is solid in a minor role, but limiting Gonzalo’s presence is another way in which Audiard seems inspired by Almodóvar, letting the women occupy all the space.

Shot by Paul Guilhaume mostly in a Paris studio with a small amount of Mexico location work, the movie looks terrific — never too slick, with a slight rough-edged quality that adds to its appeal. The camerawork is loose and supple, the moody textures of the many night scenes are effective and the use of vibrant color is invigorating.

Some Francophile cinema fans keep hoping that Audiard while make another searing drama like A Prophet or Rust and Bone , but any filmmaker who declines to repeat himself and instead keeps experimenting and pushing in new directions should be applauded. With Emilia Pérez , he has made something fresh, full of vitality and affecting, held aloft by its own quietly soaring power.

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