At the risk of sounding like a broken record, “@Zola” is based off of an insanely viral series of tweets from way back in 2015 and the subsequent Rolling Stone article written about a month later. The tweets took over the internet for a brief period, becoming one of the few universally viral things that truly everyone had heard about in some capacity.
It's worth mentioning this not only for those unaware, but also because “@Zola” the film has a lot in common with those original tweets. Most importantly, it retains the fierce and controlled perspective that one gets from someone’s personal twitter feed and remains an uncompromised vision of one hell of a road trip.
Taylour Page (“Boogie,” “White Boy Rick”) is Zola, a part-time waitress/dancer who meets Stefani, played by Riley Keough, who, after knowing her for just one day, invites her on a trip down to Florida with her, her boyfriend, and her roommate. What is pitched as a weekend “hoe trip” to dance at a high-end strip club for some quick high volume cash quickly goes off the rails thanks to Stefani and those around her never telling Zola the whole, if any, truth.
Zola is an assured, confident protagonist. Page lends her a commanding charisma without robbing her of the confused vulnerability one would have in a situation this bizarre. She is the way we, the audience, see this tale, and Page and co-writer/director Janicza Bravo (“Forever,” “Lemon”) make sure the entire film is her story via methods like voice overs, freeze frames, and texts all over the screen.
Page’s performance is excellent, but not brashedly so. The performance that assuredly is, and the one most will likely walk away from the film talking about, is Riley Keough (“Under the Silver Lake,” “American Honey”) as Stefani, the somewhat antagonist, obliviously narcissistic dancer who ropes Zola into this entire journey. Her performance is one of bafflement; clearly there can’t be someone in the world who’s this ignorant to the way they treat other people. Keough’s mannerisms and way of speaking are clearly meant to be a portrait of an ignorant white girl with a blaccent, appropriating a culture she may have grown up around and may consider herself a part of, but can only tangentially be and this creates a palpable air of uncomfortability.
It's a purposeful uncomfortability though, not one that would arise if, say, a film with this kind of character wasn’t written and directed by a black woman. Keough and Bravo play with this idea, is she this antagonistic narcissist or is she actually aware of her actions? Some of her final moments in the film are haunting because of the toying nature of the reveal of whether she is this person or if it's just another mask she wears. Her boyfriend Derrek, played by Nicholas Braun (), is more one note but is still an interesting character as we watch him twist and turn through this bizarre journey, perhaps falling back a bit too much on the apathetic personality Braun has become known for from works like “Succession.”
Meanwhile, Colman Domingo (“Candyman (2021),” “euphoria”) is positively electrifying unsettling as X, Stefani’s roommate. Revealing exactly what he gets up to in the film would spoil too much, but he’s played with unhinged joy by Domingo. Taking note of the scenes when he’s smiling like a gleeful child and contrasting those with what’s actually going on in those moments can be truly haunting. Yet, he has this sort of controlling charisma about him that makes it at least easy to understand why Stefani still hangs around him so much. If nothing else, he proves to be a fascinating foil for Zola as the pair are clearly the two smartest people on this trip and butt heads constantly.
Throughout, Bravo and co-writer Jeremy O. Harris (“Slave Play,” “Black Exhibition”) frame the film with numerous moments of social media framings and graphics that border on elegant. It's a great way of bridging the gap between the social media origins of the story and the realistic nature of the film lens. One extended sequence swipes through a variety of men as if one is swiping through a series of photos, and big moments are punctuated by the sound the Twitter app makes when you send a tweet, implying that these are when Zola sent one tweet and began the next. The simplest and also arguably the coolest is the usage of the Apple iOS font and clock at the top middle of the screen to punctuate act breaks, making the entire film look as if it’s being watched through an iPhone or iPad.
Bravo and Harris even get meta at multiple moments, having characters talk directly to the camera to communicate certain perspectives and punctuate important moments. One big moment about halfway through the film even switches to a completely different perspective brought in from Reddit, further communicating the different experiences social media can portray about the same events, and how blatantly shallow and false some of those perspectives can be.
As fascinating and engrossing as “@Zola” is to watch, it does have one big issue: the film, by all accounts, doesn’t fit into any typical storytelling structure. There isn’t really an act structure to speak of, nor are there typical character arcs or “lessons learned.” Not that a movie needs to have these things to be enjoyable, but it doesn’t always feel purposeful. Some moments do, the ending is particularly masterful in this regard; it abruptly ends, fading away without explaining anything, much like 90% of someone’s life would be unanswered for if you saw it through the lens of social media. Yet, not all of its storytelling oddities feel this purposeful.
It’s hard to be upset though when everything that’s happening is this bizarre and engaging. Bravo and cinematographer Ari Wegner (“Lady Macbeth,” “In Fabric”) have crafted a film of a certain kind of beauty, using the same slow shots and lights that dazzle that one might associate with an old Hollywood production shot on soundstages. It lends everything a very artificial and almost fairytale aesthetic, leaning even further into the glamorized facade of this social media inspired tale.
“@Zola” is a truly unique film. It puts itself out there to be seen, plain and simple, and it doesn’t give a single shit about how you feel about it, structural anomalies be damned. This unflinching perspective, combined with some truly intoxicating performances and a heavy, smart use of social media elements means that, like the tweets, this isn’t a story likely to be forgotten anytime soon. 4.5/5
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