A stripper named Zola embarks on a wild road trip to Florida.... (Full plot summary below)
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A stripper named Zola embarks on a wild road trip to Florida.
Leave your thoughts about Zola.
| TheWrapYolanda MachadoZola feels utterly contemporary but will no doubt be examined for decades to come, as a marker of both this particularly crazy time in history and of the moment that social media became self-aware. Whip-smart, funny, complicated, and just plain wild, Zola is 90 minutes of brilliance. |
| Los Angeles TimesKatie WalshZola’s authorship and Bravo’s respect for her storytelling make Zola a wholly original experience. It’s a brutally honest account of sex work, often dangerous and infrequently sexy, punctuated with Zola’s one-liners, observations and recounting of laugh-out-loud moments. |
| The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Sarah-Tai BlackBravo’s style echoes King’s own: It is fun and whimsical, formally playful, sometimes bordering on the fantastic but always grounded in the real and the intimate. |
| The TelegraphRobbie CollinAt the very end of Janicza Bravo’s Zola, just as you’re struggling to comprehend what on earth the film is supposed to amount to, there is a wonderful moment when you realise that’s the entire point. |
| Consequence of SoundClint WorthingtonZola‘s not without its faults. The script is a little too loosy-goosy for its own good, and the last 10-15 minutes are admittedly a lackluster resolution to the high-tension hijinks on display. But until that point, it’s downright thrilling to watch a film breeze through its grimly funny energy with such exuberant confidence, especially with such a new, vibrant voice in Paige. |
| Vanity FairRichard LawsonThough premised on the slight pretenses of Twitter, the world of Bravo’s film is no fictionalized, seedily appealing underbelly. It’s simply America: often frightful, sometimes grimly amusing, and ever rattling along in its entropy. |
| Original-CinKim HughesThere is a bristling, neon energy to Zola which, given its provenance as a series of real-life tweets from waitress and exotic dancer (and now executive producer) A’ziah “Zola” King, seems about right. This is a road trip movie straight outta weirdsville. |
| Washington PostAnn HornadayDespite its unconventional source material, it turns out to be surprisingly well-crafted, elevated by breathtaking central performances and the stylish, slyly knowing sensibility of director Janicza Bravo. |
| The New YorkerRichard BrodyThe movie exemplifies the power of the cinema—even the popular and commercial and invigoratingly swingy cinema—to reflect the inner life through imaginative methods that, at the same time, reveal the fractures and complexities of public life with probing and passionate insight. |
| LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenA dizzying story told at a dizzying pace, Zola might register for some as a transgressive lark (it certainly has comic touches, including a montage of Stefani’s clients’ penises). My experience was more like a simmering panic attack; it’s “fun” in the same way Uncut Gems was fun. |
