Zola (Janicza Bravo, 2020)

Girls gone wild

Talking about a film starring two strong women seeking to liberate themselves from the manipulation of men, a tale full of betrayals and reversals and bruisingly intense grappling between these women and the men they encounter along the way.  

No not Black Widow--I mean Janicza Bravo's Zola which I figure is at least as thrilling and considerably funnier. The film arguably the first of its kind is based on a tweetstorm by one Aziah 'Zola' King back in 2015 that ended up being followed by Ava DuVernay, Missy Elliott, Solange Knowles, and some 108,000 others.

Hollywood smelling a good thing wasn't far behind. James Franco signed up to direct but dropped out due to sexual misconduct allegations; Janicza Bravo came on board and the film debuted at Sundance in 2020.

The story--or as it's known in socmed circles #TheStory--goes like this: Zola (Taylour Paige) was a Detroit waitress moonlighting as a stripper when she meets Jessica (Riley Keough, here renamed Stefani); the two hit it off and Zola declares "next time you dance I'm gonna dance with you." Very next day Stefani tweets: BITCH LETS GO TO FLORIDA! and Zola after some hemming and hawing agrees; they're accompanied by Jarrett (Nicholas Braun, renamed Derrek) and Stefani's roommate Z (Colman Domingo, renamed X)--the four boarding a van that X drives to Tampa. 

It's a trip, literally and otherwise. Zola finds out that the job isn't stripping but trapping (stripper lingo for tricking) and X isn't just Stefani's roommate but is 'taking care of her' (translate: her pimp). Zola wants out but X threatens her: "I know where you live"--between a rock and a hard place, in effect. 

Zola is the source fount of course; aside from coming up with #TheStory (which actually happened, more or less) she also provides a distinct voice and tone that folks have compared to Homer. Not sure I'd go that far, but hearing the cadence and accent speak clearly from each brief burst of a hundred and forty characters one thinks of naturalborn storytellers like Twain, and of the inventive play on punctuation spelling grammar of Joyce. 

Bravo deftly translates Zola's twitterspeak to the big screen: her film has the garish color palette of Sean Baker's The Florida Project and a bit of its offhand lyricism; the day-glo surrealism of Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers only more grounded in reality; the grittiness of the Safdie brothers without the headache-inducing shaky-cam--and is the small man leaning back in a pool chair greeting Zola and friends a (if I remember correctly) cheerful "have a safe trip" an allusion to David Lynch?

But Bravo judging from this one film I've seen isn't just an accumulation of film tropes (unlike some directors I can think of); she has a distinct visual sensibility all her own, her lens gazing in quiet horror at a vast Confederate flag fluttering proudly in the wind, or at a drive-by glimpse of officers surrounding a black man on the ground, alternately pounding and tasing him (you hear the click of the handheld weapon) while he pleads for his life. 

And Bravo has the timing of a gifted comic director: a montage of men on top of Stefani looking alternately rough and fat and tired sums up the horror and darkly comic pathos of a long night spent servicing men and their (often pathetic) fantasies; the occasional chirp of tweets posted online punctuates a funny line, or functions as sonic cue (much like a clopping horse or chugging train) to the film's accelerating pace. 

If there's a flaw it's the nagging belief that Bravo's too protective of her girls: we get a suggestion of the nightmare this weekend was to Zola--helped in no small part by Paige's increasingly skeptical eyes--but we're spared the full brunt of what the experience may have been like, the exhaustion not to mention soreness especially of Stefani, having bedded what I conservatively estimate to be some thirty men in two days. We're not sure how much of Zola's story we can believe, and while Bravo (and co-scriptwriter Jeremy Harris) include Stefani's version of #TheStory on Reddit, it's so over-the-top cartoonish you dismiss it out of hand.

Keough has the showier role as Stefani, Zola's not-to-be-trusted BHF (Best Ho Forever) but Piage has the arguably more difficult role of being not just the film's POV but its heart and moral center. Zola doesn't just tell the story but determines who's the villainess and heroine (her of course); she may have landed in the situation way over her head but she speaks her mind and says no and even helps Stefani in her trapping efforts ("You sellin pussy for $150? Pussy is worth thousands!")--Paige has to convince us that Zola can do all that and still make it funny.  Keough with her outrageous appropriated black accent charms Zola and (whenever necessary) Derrek into going along with what's going on, though she can't seem to charm X--he's as volatile dangerous as Morgan Freeman was in Street Smart (tho less smart apparently when it comes to product pricing). 

You suspect the film sugarcoats a few elements but it's as entertaining as hell. Not bad, a lot of fun, one of the better movies of the year so far--though to be honest I haven't really tried seeking out what's being released out there.