Not everyone's I-75 trip to Paradise

I saw my first in theatre post-Covid (I know technically we’re still in Covid) film yesterday. The last time I’d been inside a theatre was in February 2020 in Tampa Bay, Fla. (interesting as per review below). The venue for the film: Cinema du Parc, my favorite Montreal art house cinema. The film? Janicza Braco’s Bravo's Zola. How appropriate. Here I am in Montreal – where theatres are open compared to eternally shut down Ontario – and the movie I’m going to see has a Detroit theme. That’s the only reason I saw it. But disappointingly, Detroit plays hardly a significant role at all. But about the Covid theatre-going experience. I went to an early afternoon matinee. The ticket seller was very friendly, and I had to choose my seat electronically, on a graph set of squares that I dubbed a video game. He said it resembled “Battleship.” Then downstairs I went into this three-screen theatre in a small near-downtown subterranean shopping mall (part of the appeal). Only two seats had been picked before I arrived. I picked mine in the row behind and two seats away because it was central. (All individuals or groups were separated by two seats.) Then a couple arrived to fill those seats. Then a couple of guys arrived to sit to my left. After 10 minutes, the couple got up and moved several rows to the front. In the age of Covid one must always ask (at least I do): are people moving away from me because it’s a health risk or in this case they want a better view of the screen? Then the guy in my row sitting closest to me switches to the seat on the other side of his friend, further distancing himself. Again, a health precaution? As for mask-wearing, masks were required when moving around the cinema but not at your seat. And only two people were allowed in the washroom at any time. As for the movie, while Detroit starts out as its setting and where Aziah "Zola" King (Taylour Paige) meets Stefani (Riley Keough), that’s about it for the Motor City’s presence. And, when in Detroit, the characters are all inside buildings. There are no visual clues this is Detroit at all. 95 per cent of the film takes place in Tampa, where the two women drive with X (Colman Domingo) and Stefani’s clueless boyfriend Derrek (Nicholas Braun). There, as per the plot, things turn out not to be as advertised. Stefani had lured Zola into the fanciful trip by saying both could strip at a nightclub for big bucks (Zola is a part time stripper). The story descends into a maelstrom of events from which there is seemingly no escape. While this is a dark comedy, I’d never have gone to see it otherwise had it not been for the Detroit factor, which turned to be immaterial. But technically, this is an almost brilliant film. From the opening multiscreen glamour shots of the two women next to each other applying makeup with an inverted harp score to the crazily disjointed images on their trip south and what happens in Tampa Bay, the soundtrack – with its bouncy score and crazy whistles – laughingly undermines any potential plot seriousness. And Paige and Keough are superb, especially Keough who, despite the film’s title, is really the central character and has by far the more expressive role. So, beware: the film’s a thrill but the subject matter not everyone’s I-75 trip to Paradise.