Fish and Cherries Productions

Summary: Emma (Alison Pill) works in a sex doll factory and has some major breast envy, especially after some insensitive comments from her coworker and casual sex partner Bob (Tyler Labine). In her frustration, she starts drawing a comic about an aspiring filmmaker named Edward (Gael Garcia Bernal) struggling to maintain control of his movie while working with an attractive new producer (Claudia Ohana). His film is about a model named Michelle (Mariana Ximenes) who gets away from her old life to Brazil in order to write a novel and discover some things about herself. Her novel is about a worker in a sex doll factory named Emma…

…oh boy…

I can’t do my usual shtick here. I’m going to reflect the concept of the movie here, so be prepared for a brain twister.

Review: Zoom is one crazy movie and will definitely take a bit to wrap your brains around. Not because it’s “like, so deep, man,” but because there’s a lot the audience needs to keep track of. It’s as if Inception was a loop rather than a descent. It’s impossible to know which is the “prime story,” especially when each time an author makes changes to their story, the ripples are felt in the other stories. It becomes really fun when you realize just how much the movie is messing with you.

Style, oh style
Three paths with three different dressings
Unto Emma come brightness and a quirky soundtrack
Reminisce to Scott Pilgrim*, Emma Dearest
For it falls on your heels
Unto lovely Michelle come tints and music
Both scintillating with sex appeal
Standard cinema sort of style
Unto Edward come full animation
Saturated colors and rotoscopes
Captures the comic feel
Three styles
Three stories
Three separate threads that form one tapestry

*Alison Pill was also in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World as Kim the drummer.

Colin: What about the sex?
Ronin**: Sorry?
C: There was a buttload of sexual themes in this movie, no pun intended. You must have noticed.
R: Well… yeah. Sex and sexuality are heavy themes in this film, right down to the setting and conflicts. Emma works in a sex doll factory, Michelle went to the place her parents conceived her to write her book, and Edward’s newfound impotence kicks off the wave of plot ripples. That’s not getting into half of it.
C: I just feel it’s a bit excessive.
R: Excessive? It’s a core theme of the movie!
C: Yeah, to the point where it drives almost every plot point. If you tried to censor the bits about sex, this movie straight up wouldn’t exist.
R: Okay, okay. So maybe people who are squeamish around these topics shouldn’t see the movie. Or at least, they may not enjoy it as much.

**My critic alter-ego.

As you can see, this is not a traditional film, so when a storyline goes from dealing with breast implants to a cocaine heist while a man is romancing a sex doll that resembles his dead wife, you can’t be too…

R: Oy. Stop that.

Wait… what?

R: The sex motif is my thing. Stick to plot.

I… I mean, the heist is a serious plot point where the movie goes off the rails.

R: Off the rails? Okay, it is weird for the storyline to go from feeling like an episode of Community to a dark spy thriller…

Back, back, back, says I
Lay your hands away from style

R: Okay, so we’re doing this.

No. No, no, I’m not going to indulge this existential argument of the soul.

You turn away
Yet this to the ending is a mirror…

R: Oh, shut up. The only reason you exist is because of that Intermediate Poetry class we took in college as a back door into the Creative Writing major… which we never got in.

Look, can we all just agree that we like the movie?

R: Sure.

Verily.

Okay. There we go.

Fun Tidbit: People may have heard of Alison Pill and Gael Garcia Bernal stateside, but this is Mariana Ximenes’ first English speaking film (the film itself is Canadian, so American film doesn’t seem appropriate). But she’s no newcomer; she’s been working in Brazilian film and TV for about twenty years.