“@Zola” is a low-budget, no-stars movie. Some of these took up screen vacancies the last year and a half, when the studios weren’t shipping many new films.
But the Pause button did not, this time, turn into a full Stop. This week may have been the last chance a movie like “@Zola” had to be offered to a wide audience.
Not that the wide audience is going to want to see it. The new film is almost without attraction. It is about sex but is never sexy. Its story was old stuff in the 1950s. One doesn’t like its characters.
It was filmed with a soft focus that suggests lack of good equipment rather than artsy intentions. The actors’ pole-dancing moves are more impressive than are their character-building skills. And the dialog absolutely celebrates its mindlessness.
Then, when the show was over, I was reminded of an old Woody Allen joke. Two people are complaining about a restaurant. It was expensive. The selection wasn’t much. The food arrived cold and didn’t have much flavor.
“Yes,” said the second guy. “And such small portions.”
AMC seems to have added almost 10 minutes of ads and previews between the “published” start time of their movies and the time the features actually appear on-screen. Take away that half hour, and “@Zola” runs something under 90 minutes. A small portion.
One more thing: the movie is not about the late 19th century novelist Emile Zola. Too bad the characters of the movie don’t die of carbon monoxide poisoning, as he did, before the movie gets started.
“@Zola” was directed (in 1988) and co-written by Janicza Bravo, working from a series of “tweets” (brief internet publications sent off to their author’s subscribers). One is tempted to identify the “tweets” as “real life.”
They are about the events of a weekend their author (a young Detroit waitress played by Taylour Paige) spent with a new friend, Stefani (Riley Keough). The two of them share a bent for pole dancing for tips at strip clubs.
Stefani invites Zola to travel with her to Tampa for the weekend. That’s a long drive between strip clubs. They are driven by a glowering older man. Stefani’s goofy beau rides along.
Voice over, sub-titles, and super-titles all figure here, as if we would otherwise not be able to follow this inordinately simple story. Once the clubs close, Stefani and Zola go to a large hotel where a series of men arrive (some of them attracted by web postings dreamed up by Zola) to have sex with Stefani.
Saturday night they don’t even bother to go to the clubs, although Z points out that they make better money there. Stefani’s “driver” takes them to private homes where Stefani gets back to work again. At their last stop, things don’t go as planned.
Then the “driver” pays for the other three to fly home. Unless you count this generosity, there isn’t a surprise in the story.
And it needed to surprise. If there’s nothing new here (except some off-putting male nudity and a series of cryptic references to the Christian religion), why should we be interested?
Maybe the message of the film is, electronic media don’t seem to have changed life much. What, not even “tweets”?
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