Zola: In the Shade Film Festival Review

Zola: Movie Review

Cast: Taylour Page, Riley Keough, Colman Domingo, Nicholas Braun

Director: Janicza Bravo

Based on a 2015 viral Tweet thread from Aziah "Zola" King and a Rolling Stone article, Janicza Bravo's screeching road crime black comedy about strippers is a slice of life straight from an embellished voice put through a prism of Sean Baker's Tangerine.

Page is Zola, a stripper whose mission is to tell the audience "a story about how me and this bitch fell out" and whose pronouncement kicks off a rollercoaster ride through a weekend in Florida. No sooner has Zola met The Girlfriend Experience's Riley Keough's Stefani, she's rushed headlong into a chance to make some serious money as a dancer in Florida.

But as Zola heads down for what she hopes will be a weekend of fun, it soon transpires that Stefani's seeming pimp (Domingo) and clueless boyfriend Derrick (Braun) has other plans in mind for them. Soon, Zola is in over her head...

With its style over substance approach, this 85 minute film is a perfectly engaging ride, if you're willing to get on board with its rhythms early on. From some sentences being punctuated by the sound of a Tweet being posted (presumably to reference what was actually said in the original thread) to an about face of narrative later on, Bravo's film makes great fist of the threadbare nature of the source material to stretch it as far as it can go.

It's greatly helped by Page, who delivers a performance that elevates her from an unreliable narrator to someone who you believe from the very beginning. But once she gets her character Zola down to Florida, Page really takes control of the role, delivering from deep within to produce something that's worthy of your attention.

Equally, Keough's utterly unlikeable Stefani is a strong presence onscreen as Bravo mixes brash storytelling with hilarious voiceover and the thinnest of narratives to really tell the horror of what seemingly transpired on the Florida trip.

There's an addictive energy to Zola, with the initial screeching of the women almost too much to bear at times. But it's part of the story schtick as Page's Zola starts to tire of the antics of her newfound friends - and as the audience, it gets you on her side immediately, casting away any aspersions that Zola has embellished her story (even though she likely has).

It may be an urban thriller told through a slickly polished lens, but Zola's here for a good time not a long time approach pays off dividends to spin an urban myth that's fresh and exciting for an audience rarely exposed to such vibrant societal underbellies.