Have you read the story “Guts” by Chuck Palahniuk? It is not for the faint of heart; it is about the weird, increasingly dangerous ways that one teenage boy finds to masturbate. Reactions to “Guts” can vary depending on whether someone reads the story or hears it: the former group often recoils in disgust, while the latter group howls in laughter. The medium matters a great deal, in other words, and the new film Zola puts that theory to the test. It is based on an infamous Twitter thread, one that involves strippers, prostitution, betrayal and violence. Tweets stir the imagination differently than a movie camera, and the literal nature of films adds some uncomfortable elements it cannot quite reconcile with the thread’s reputation.
The screenplay is co-written by director Janicza Bravo and Jeremy O. Harris, who wrote the Tony-nominated Slave Play, and it has an opening whose brevity is somewhat shocking. Taylour Page plays Zola, a young woman who works as a waitress and occasionally moonlights as a stripper. She becomes fast friends with Stefani (Riley Keough), another stripper, and soon they go on a road trip to Tampa, with a promise of nonstop partying and easy money. Stefani brings two others with her: her boyfriend, Derrek (Nicholas Braun), and an older man known only as X (Colman Domingo). A few things about the trip are fishy to Zola, particularly Stefani’s intentions, and once she understands the trip’s true nature, she struggles to survive and preserve her dignity.
The bright lights, stylish editing and nonstop profanity suggest Zola will be like Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers, or even Sean Baker’s Tangerine. Those films have a buoyancy and satirical element that is noticeably absent from Bravo’s adaptation. This is a grim, dark film about characters in a hopeless situation. There is some sympathy for Zola because she finds herself in one dangerous scenario after another, except there is too much repetition in the bloated middle act. When we learn that Stefani is not just a stripper but a sex worker, that leads to a montage of full-frontal male genitalia coupled with Stefani’s dispassionate bedroom performance (intriguingly, Zola lacks any real female nudity). Sometimes we hear Zola’s commentary via voiceover. She frequently says “that’s gross,” as a way of easing the tension, but Harris and Bravo turn the joke into a clumsy echo.
All the key performers are wholly convincing, bringing a different energy to their roles, and there is some thrill to the alchemy of the characters. Paige and Colman, both of whom appeared in last year’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, are the clear highlights. Whereas Zola fights for her bodily autonomy, X terrorizes her in bizarre ways, sometimes veering from an American to African accent.
While some of Zola does not work, it is admittedly refreshing to watch a complicated film and not know how to feel about it. This is a challenging, uncompromising film that refuses to provide easy answers about how we should react. Race and sexuality are two key issues here, and it is likely everyone who watches it will see something different. That kind of ambiguity is more unintentional than deliberate, however, since it is seemingly unaware of the nasty aftertaste it can inspire. Zola unfolds with the opposite of “you had to be there,” FOMO storytelling. In fact, only imagining these characters would make them more tolerable. It is one thing to read about the world’s dumbest suicide attempt or a botched kidnapping, while it is quite another to see it play out in all its ugly, tragic detail.
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