By George & Josh Bate
Every once in a while, a movie comes around that demands debate and conversation long after the credits roll. The kind of movie that will dominate discussions on the drive home from the theater and almost certainly continue among friends, family, and social media users for days to come. The kind of movie that you simply can’t stop thinking or talking about, such is the literal and proverbial jaw drop that it causes. Kristoffer Borgli’s The Drama is one of these movies, representing dark humor at its bleakest, most clever, and boundary-pushing.
The Drama follows Emma (Zendaya) and Charlie (Robert Pattinson), a loving couple just days away from their wedding celebration. While finalizing preparations for their big day, Emma and Charlie play a drunken game of ‘What’s the Worst thing You’ve Ever Done?’, which leads to an explosive confession that sends the once seemingly perfect couple spiraling into chaos.
Borgli’s follow-up to the woefully underappreciated Dream Scenario begins as a sleek, even generic contemporary romantic comedy. Robert Pattinson’s’ British expat Charlie recounts the moment he met Zendaya’s character Emma at a coffee shop as he prepares the wedding speech he plans to lovingly deliver in just a few days. The initial meet cute involves Charlie lying about having read the book Emma is reading as a means to begin a conversation with her. From there, a whirlwind courtship ensues, the two share their first kiss in a strangely endearing setting, and a marriage proposal follows suit. Up until this point, The Drama has all the trappings of a conventional romantic comedy, albeit one powered by two of the most famous and compelling actors on the planet.
Then, seemingly out of nowhere, Borgli subverts even the wildest of expectations and transforms his romantic comedy into something original, daring, and thought-provoking. Rumors have long circulated about what The Drama is really about, but, to preserve the film’s secrets, this review will not delve into any details beyond those covered in promotional material. Ideally, audiences will head into the film knowing as little as possible and, in turn, be as stunned by the game of ‘What’s the Worst Thing You’ve Ever Done?’ as the characters are. Those who have spoiled the hook of the film, however, will be delighted to know that The Drama amounts to far more than just sheer shock value. The twist, if it can be labeled as such, merely serves as the instigating incident from which all manner of frenzy, anxiety, and doubt stem from.
The explosive confession from the game moves Borgli’s film firmly into dark comedy territory. But this isn’t the kind of dark comedy viewers expect from the likes of Martin McDonagh or the Coen Brothers; rather, it’s decidedly edgier and more topical. Many of the film’s laughs come in the form of moments we, as audience members, feel ashamed to be laughing at, but it’s this zone of discomfort that Borgli wants his characters and viewers swimming in for the duration of his film. At times, the movie gets dangerously close to crossing the line from edgy to offensive as it uses an extraordinarily sensitive topic as the crux of many of its jokes. However, that flavor of boundary-pushing is the appeal of The Drama, a film unafraid to confront society’s most challenging issues with a sense of humor so morbid other movies wouldn’t dare to touch.
With a throughline of dark humor, The Drama asks its characters what they are willing to tolerate for the sake of love. Close relationships should entail both partners being comfortable sharing everything and anything with one another, but what happens when one partner chooses to withhold a key piece of their past? Does this information alter the love you have for your partner? How do you reconcile all the positive qualities you see in your partner with the darkest of histories? Borgli lets these questions simmer not only for Robert Pattinson’s Charlie but for the audience as we inevitably begin to ask ourselves: what would we do if a person we loved made such a shocking confession?
Fortunately, Borgli opts against an overly serious take on this question, instead keeping the film grounded while inviting morbid laughs as we see the stability of a seemingly perfect couple crumble before our eyes. Stepping into the role of Charlie, Pattinson becomes the embodiment of anxiety. The handsome and successful museum curator from England, understandably so, has immense challenges reckoning with his soon-to-be wife Emma’s confession, which, while tormenting him, makes for a brand of dark entertainment audiences won’t be able to take their eyes off of. Pattinson phenomenally portrays the dizzying unraveling of his character in a way that taps into the humor of a horrible situation and yet remarkably still feels fixed in reality.
Zendaya, meanwhile, has arguably never been better as Emma. Everything is going swimmingly for the literary editor as she heads into her wedding day, until the most egregious of overshares threatens to derail the perfect life ahead of her. Despite being billed first, Zendaya plays a role secondary to Pattinson as the film is more interested in examining how Charlie reckons with the revelation rather than how the resurfacing of the past affects Emma. Nonetheless, Zendaya brings incredible authenticity to her performance, ensuring that the audience buys wholly into Emma and Charlie’s electrifying courtship and the all-consuming anguish that characterizes the days leading up to their marriage. Like Pattinson, Zendaya exhibits pitch-perfect comedic timing, while never leaning too heavily into the humor and thus derailing the groundedness of the story.
Despite Zendaya and Pattinson sharing electric chemistry, The Drama fails to reach the full potential of its admittedly bold premise by waiting too long in its runtime to get serious. Borgli seems so comfortable extracting humor from the most humorless of situations that much of the nuance surrounding the nature of Emma’s revelation goes unexplored. There are times when characters speak in more general terms about the broader societal issue at the core of the film, but overwhelmingly it avoids these conversations by always reverting back to a joke. The Drama could have had something really interesting to say about a topic the vast majority of movies are terrified to even remotely touch, and yet it exercises baffling restraint by failing to comment more meaningfully on the subject matter. It’s as if Chekhov’s gun is placed on the table, joked about rather than seriously talked about, and then ultimately never fired.
While it disappoints in not having much of substance to say about the sensitive topic at its forefront, The Drama steadily evolves into an unexpected heartfelt examination of romance. Borgli’s film reckons with the juxtaposition of emotion and logic – the conflict that ensues when love, the most powerful and uncontrollable of feelings, clashes with our rationale. From its initially outrageous first act, the filmmaker applies a more intimate approach to relationships come the end of the film and, in doing so, manages to craft quite a heartwarming and even emotionally stirring modern romance that showcases the perseverance of love beyond all reason.
VERDICT: 8/10
Filmmaker Kristoffer Borgli follows up the woefully underappreciated Dream Scenario with a movie that you will not be able to stop talking and thinking about after watching. What begins as a well-made, yet fairly straightforward romance movie reinvents itself into something entirely unexpected, original, and subversive as Borgli introduces an extraordinarily sensitive topic into his film. The Drama thrives in plummeting Robert Pattinson’s anxiety-ridden lead character and, in turn, the audience into palpable discomfort as Charlie reckons with his fiance’s devastating revelation and the audience is made to laugh at a number of disturbing jokes. While the film tows the line between edgy and offensive a tad too closely, its willingness to embrace the bleakest and most clever elements of the dark comedy genre render it an undeniably enthralling watch. Borgli doesn’t take full advantage of his bold premise, however, as he leans too heavily into humor and not enough into more thought-provoking and substantive commentary. The film makes up for this rare misstep somewhat by inviting the audience to contemplate difficult aspects of their own intimate relationships before converging on an unexpectedly heartfelt note. Every couple should watch The Drama, a movie that will spark endlessly interesting (and very likely heated) conversation among partners. This is the most original and boundary-pushing date night movie in years.