The week before a wedding is always going to be stressful. But in writer/director Kristoffer Borgli’s pitch-black comedy, a shocking revelation leads to pre-marriage hell for Charlie (Robert Pattinson) and Emma (Zendaya). Quite why you’d participate in a potentially ruinous party game so close to your big day is just one aspect of The Drama that never feels entirely convincing but it makes for one hell of a conversation starter. It also provides an opportunity for Borgli – who previously wrote and directed surreal Nicolas Cage comedy Dream Scenario – to maximise discomfort on and off screen. This is cinema to make you squirm.
From the off, Borgli toys with the facades people put on even in the most intimate relationships, and pokes at moral quandaries around thought crime and perceived wrongdoing. Take the meet-cute between Charlie and Emma, where he pretends he’s a fan of the novel she’s reading. The fact she doesn’t initially hear him due to being deaf in one ear is just the start of the awkwardness that only gets more excruciating as the film progresses.
Egged on by recently married friends (Alana Haim and Mamoudou Athie), Emma and Charlie confess to “the worst thing they’ve ever done” over a drunken dinner. It’s Emma’s revelation that detonates a shockwave that reverberates far beyond the wedding party. Her confession hasn’t been revealed in trailers and it feels like a spoiler to divulge it here. But the whole film hinges on the admission, which occurs 20 minutes in and is already doing the rounds on social media.
It will be divisive, warrants a trigger warning and, for some, will simply be beyond the pale. For those with a higher offence threshold though, it’s an exaggeratedly provocative conceit to explore how perception of a partner’s past can colour a relationship in the present. It’s an idea that Borgli digs into with increasingly intense results.
The Drama seems destined to provoke heated post-film discussions – not only about ethics in comedy but also your own personal limits when it comes to a loved one’s past. Amid all the wincing, Pattinson and Zendaya provide a solid anchor for the often outrageous material in their first of three shared projects this year (The Odyssey is out in July and Dune: Part Three follows in December).
Zendaya’s vulnerability and regret complicates the fallout from her shocking reveal, and it’s a rare opportunity to see Pattinson in more of a stripped back everyman role, unencumbered by a put-on accent or extreme makeover. With his dadcore wardrobe and museum job, he’s an ordinary bloke stuck in the centre of escalating chaos. Alana Haim also makes a spiky impression, her character’s reaction to the situation stoking the tension further.
The discomfort that’s baked into the premise of The Drama is amplified by disconcerting camera moves, cuts and audio choices, as well as Daniel Pemberton’s unsettling score. But despite all that, Borgli successfully plays things primarily for laughs. It’s hard not to cackle at a photographer’s choice of words or Charlie anxiously editing his wedding speech. Like Dream Scenario, The Drama doesn’t quite stick the landing after such an intriguing set-up but leaves plenty to chew on if you’re brave enough to RSVP.
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