Direction: Janicza Bravo
Country: USA
Co-writer and director Janicza Bravo (Lemon, 2017) based herself on the 2015 tweets by Aziah "Zola" King and a related Rolling Stone article by David Kushner to set up her sophomore feature, Zola, starring Taylour Paige, Riley Keough, Nicholas Braun and Colman Domingo.
The story follows the title character (Paige) going on a bizarre two-day road trip from Detroit to Tampa, Florida, after being invited by cunning stripper and sex worker Stefani (Keough) to dance for quick cash in clubs. They are joined on the road by Stefani’s slow-witted boyfriend (Braun) as well as her sly pimp (Domingo).
More pathetic than serious, the film tends to minimize the grimness of the situation with mindless episodes and an I-don’t-care attitude' that remove all the possible thrills within the incidences and also the curiosity we could show in the story. I left not caring what the future held for a single one of these characters because it’s all too complacently vulgar.
The idea of Zola may be appealing at its core, but Bravo was unable to present it in a satisfying manner. She certainly aims for satirical laughs here, but wears pretension on her sleeve, and the film just doesn’t deliver.
Flurries of Afrobeat try to infuse some energy but what we get here is a negatively intoxicating vibe that forced me to get absent really fast.
