ZOLA is an Adventurous Comedy For The Internet Age - Sundance Review
In 2015, a series of tweets (144, to be exact) caught the internet’s attention. Thus began the wild ride that was to become a movie just five short years later: Zola.
Named after the nickname of the woman who originally tweeted the story, who is played by Taylour Paige, this movie recounts the dramatic if not completely truthful tale of how Zola befriends a girl named Jessica, played by Riley Keough after they bond over the fact that they both “dance” on the side. The next day, Zola gets a text from Jessica asking if she wants to go with her to Florida to work a series of strip clubs. Zola agrees only after hearing how potentially lucrative it can be. Needless to say, things don’t go as planned and Zola finds herself in one crazy situation after another.
The fact that this movie is based on tweets should tell you right away that this isn’t going to be a typical movie. There’s a lot of creativity and originality with the narration and other aspects of it, and I enjoyed it, but I think by the end it does get a little confusing because it is based on information that the real Zola later admitted was embellished in order to increase shock value.
If you haven’t read the tweets yet, I suggest you wait until after you see the film. I hadn’t even heard about this story, and it was really fun to go into it without knowing exactly what was going to happen. Now that the internet has been established for quite some time, it’ll be interesting to see what other content inspires future filmmakers. Who knows, maybe Pizza Rat will one day make it to the big screen too.
Here’s the synopsis:
“You wanna hear a story about why me & this bitch here fell out? It’s kind of long but full of suspense.”
Zola meets Stefani at a restaurant where Zola waitresses, and the two immediately click over pole dancing. Only a day after they exchange numbers, Stefani invites Zola on a cross-country road trip, where the goal is to make as much money as possible dancing in Florida strip clubs. Zola agrees, and suddenly she is trapped in the craziest, most unexpected trip of her life.
Janicza Bravo (Lemon, 2017 Sundance Film Festival) returns to the Festival with this outrageously unique and eccentrically animated saga that was first chronicled in 144 tweets posted by A’ziah King on October 27, 2015. Written by Bravo and playwright Jeremy O. Harris, Zola frames the protagonist’s narrative in a groundbreaking exchange that plays with and questions perspective. Bravo’s luscious atmosphere and impeccable attention to detail is unequaled and further confirms the sophomore director as a visionary voice of American independent cinema.
