It’s a Hot ‘Zola’ summer

An image from the Zola trailer. [A24] — An image from the *Zola* trailer. [A24]

“Based on a Twitter thread” is not the most promising premise for a movie – until you realize we’ve had almost two decades of “based on a board game” or “based on a theme park ride” blockbusters. And hey, at least a Twitter thread can be narratively coherent.

Zola is, it turns out, a deliciously well-scripted and -acted film. It retells the viral story of Zola, (played by Taylour Paige), a part-time stripper in Detroit who is invited by new friend and white girl sex worker Stefani (Riley Keough) on a road trip to earn big money at a Tampa Bay strip club. But from the moment Zola gets into a truck with Stefani things start getting out of hand.

The film, featuring the racially charged and violent adventures of beautiful young women in Florida, has drawn inevitable comparisons to Spring Breakers (2013), but Zola has less political edge or aesthetic invention than that film. Nevertheless, if you’re somewhere where theaters are reopening, it’s a nice way to return to the movies: pleasurable to watch, with great performances from its leads and fun pacing, colorwork, sound and production design.

Zola is a welcome addition to a string of major releases about sex workers that avoid the Hollywood tropes of innate victimization or tragedy. It is sexually matter-of-fact and morally ambivalent, recognizing that sex work is a form of work like any other, structured around dangerous exploitation but allowing for moments of fun, creativity and power. Zola also avoids the pitfalls of over-romanticization (Magic Mike) or moralistic hand-wringing (Hustlers).

In Zola’s telling, the danger of the weekend is driven by the blundering and violent men around the two women. But insofar as Zola can manage the danger of this rather wild affair, it’s by vetting clients through the now-defunct adult classifieds website Backpage. While such sites were not a guarantor of sex worker safety, they allowed them much more control, choice and knowledge of clientele than working the streets.

But now, after SESTA/FOSTA, legislation designed to eliminate such sites, the violent men and police that make sex work so dangerous are even more powerful than when her fateful Twitter thread was written.

Can’t get enough cinematic dissection? Vicky Osterweil and Cerise Townsend are engaged in the totally realistic project of ranking every movie ever made. Their podcast is here.