Nicholas Braun

A stripper gets more than she bargained for in Zola, a bawdy road trip about sex work, female friendship and the messy world of men. This is ostensibly a comedy, but there’s a dark side to it all that makes Zola a real innocence-to-experience trip, most of that captured through the performance of Taylour Paige in the title role. To put the best possible light on things, it’s a great yarn about storytelling.

Noir dramedies based on “real people” and “true events” always resonate deeper and more receptively with those who find the characters familiar, relatable, and through the magic of great scriptwriters and stellar acting, redeemable.

In Zola, writer and director Janicza Bravo gives us a female “almost buddy” film that goes horribly south, showing off the worst of a particular class of white people, black people, and skeevy characters in-between the lot. Nobody, save for Zola, is someone you would want to know, but they sure can be funny.