Zoom is a creative puzzle box of intertwined narrative strands, a Penrose steps of coincidentally overlapping, seemingly discrete storylines that eventually all get to the same point. The action is centered on three protagonists: Emma (Alison Pill), an amateur comic book artist; Edward (Gael Garcia Bernal), a blockbuster director making a career pivot and Michelle (Mariana Ximenes), a fledging novelist struggling to write her first book. Their narratives intersect: Edward is the hero of Emma’s comic book, Michelle is the focus of Edward’s film and Emma is the subject of Michelle’s novel.
The film maintains a light, humorous approach for most of its runtime as it negotiates screen and script time between each protagonist/storyline. It also develops three distinct visual styles—one for each story. But many of its themes and cinematographic motifs are derivative and the denouement is laughably sophomoric. Ultimately, Zoom is enjoyable but never engrossing, aesthetically vibrant but never novel.
Zoom opens with the Emma storyline and no indication of the matryoskha doll narrative to come. Emma works in a sex doll factory in Toronto, has a sexual relationship with her clueless co-worker Bob (Tyler Lavine) and draws her comic in her spare time. The cinematography for her storyline evokes an assembly line, with playful horizontal pans and edits reminiscent of Wes Anderson. Director Pedro Morelli is clearly having a good time: even the set design and script are good-natured, littered with silly puns and pop-art motifs. This is the strongest of the movie’s three overlapping plotlines.
Edward’s plot is depicted in animation. Like the conveyor-esque style of the Emma storyline, this animation looks familiar (like Linklater’s Waking Life in this case), but in contrast to Emma this style is not any fun. In fact, the cartoon sequences are disappointing all around; if Morelli is going to cast one of the world’s most attractive men in the role of Edward, he could at least have his actual physical presence on screen; this voice-only casting of a bombshell is derivative of the Spike Jonze-Scarlett Johansson collaboration of Her. Edward’s struggle is a literal emasculation as he seeks to procure funding for an art film from Hollywood studios, but this is nothing we have not seen recently (Birdman comes to mind).
Thankfully, the Michelle storyline boasts a rich, kinetic cinematography, with an impetuous camera that rarely stops moving and is spliced with rapid cuts. It looks less like a Paul Greengrass thriller than it does a well-crafted music video or high-end commercial for some European fashion accessory. It complements the script well, as Michelle struggles to be taken seriously as she transitions from the superficial world of modelling to the rarefied realm of literary achievement. Unfortunately, the story she is writing—the Emma plotline—and the language she uses to construct it are worlds away from literary craftsmanship. At best, she is penning an average summer paperback.
Zoom never settles on a consistent tone, and the viewer is left to guess at the earnestness of it all. At its best, it borders on a farcical romp, with each protagonist granted its own sexcapade. Emma’s breast implants and Edward’s penis shrinkage are obviously intended for laughs, but what of Michelle’s lesbian dalliance, which is framed with somber self-seriousness as part of some feminist self-empowerment? Does Morelli want the viewer to take this as social justice or as a light-hearted gag poking fun at Edward, directing the movie within-the-movie. Since each of the artist-protagonists produces low-quality art, is this Morelli’s tragi-comic self-awareness, or does he think these are masterful works that comment on the artistic process?
The movie is too derivative, its misappropriation of feminist principles offensive, its thesis of performance and artifice well-worn. The plot structure is enjoyable, and Morelli capably executes some metafictional maneuvers, but as the three stories collapse in upon themselves, as they must, he does not wring all that he can from the narrative structure. In fact, the best features of the culminating three-plot nature of the story are also borrowed, from Inception, as the laws of physics transfer through the story layers like they do in Nolan’s overlapping dream sequences. This is fine if the tone is supposed to be light, but not if the film portends to seriousness.
The ultimately puerile reconciliation of the three plot lines at film’s end is either hilarious or frankly infuriating; the latter seems more likely as the editing builds up the last shot to be profoundly meaningful, which it inarguably is not. If this build-up is supposed to highlight its silliness, the final shot points at the audience and giggles—the joke is on us for watching. In either case, Zoom’s conclusion is rather juvenile, at best clever hijinks, at worst a damning exhibition of Morelli’s vapidity.
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