The new talk of the town of absurd and riveting movies this year was bound to be The Drama. From its trailer concealing a major secret between the two characters, Intrigue was high to see what that heavily under wraps information was. And now all is finally revealed with the release of the film this weekend. The Drama is a genre meshing rom-com about a couple (Emma and Charlie) who are nearing days away from their long awaited wedding night. All is well and excitement is high between the two, until Emma reveals a troubling secret about her past that makes Charlie question whether he’s getting married to the person he thought she was. The film is also notably starring the big movie stars Robert Pattinson and Zendaya, who will star in other movies together two more times this year with Dune Part Three and The Odyssey. While The Drama, being presented as an entertaining romcom on the surface, feels extremely less scaled high than the other two, the stakes are definitely ran up to the max thanks to a stressful and dark descent into romantic hell throughout the pacing’s consistency. One thing about the director of this film Kristoffer Borgli is that he thrives off the thrills of absurdity, which is evident from past films of his like Dream Scenario or Former Cult member Hears Music For The First Time. the title alone describes his insanity and knack for capturing a specific oddity.
The title of The Drama, while not as alluring, has its own greater meaning. The common phrase “Drama” is used vaguely to mask the chaos of this film as a simple spiral of complication needing to be solved, when in reality it’s the most absurd and worst case scenario possible. Kristoffer makes a great commendable effort in drawing your attention in right from the beginning. It establishes their messy meant to be relationship right from the beginning, with things like anecdotes of their first kiss being after accidentally setting off a fire alarm, or the small fact that they accidentally hired a drug addict as a DJ for their wedding. They’re immediately established as disorganized minds for better and for worse right from the beginning. That however, is only the quarter of insanity that the rest of the narrative brings. The secret revelation poses a treacherous topic of discussion and a touchy subject, yet finds a way to turn it into a dark comedy thriller that’s riveting all the way through. It has a great sense of meshing tones together simaltaneosly, with poking fun at the awkward position that this revelation puts the two at while making it thrilling as well, clenching in anticipation to see how they’ll handle the inevitable situations to come with that daunting new info at hand.
The camerawork is immensely uncomfortable in the most tense moments, capturing a tone shift or look of disgust to establish anxiety through personal, up front close ups. The editing is sharp as well, serving a similar purpose to linger on the tension and individual anxiousness of each victim of this dreadful situation. Despite its appeal of wild dark humor and thrills, it still has a bit of worthwhile things to say through its situation of secrets revealed about a lover Charlie thought he always knew to the fullest degree. It poses questions about how much grace you’ll extend for a lover during a detrimental mistake or secret unlocked liked that. It scars a relationship for a long time, and builds a cycle of trust issues, as that person wasn’t vulnerable enough to admit the mistake and secret from the jump It arises troubling intrusive views about that person you’d never want to consider and a wonder of whether they could now be hiding an even larger plethora of baggage not unpacked. The ultimate motive behind the chaos isn’t anywhere misdirected anger, but more so trying to forgive and forget about the past, but still having the haunting reality of the detail chase you all around. Questions and dilemmas about how much vulnerabilty partners truly have to show their worst moments arrive, and questions of how much empathy we have to understand arrive, but answers don’t at times when Kristoffer willingly chooses not to let them in.
It seems like he has the awareness and capability to explore deeper themes of marriage issues and what happens when the level of transparency dissipates, but it also seems like he has no desire to fully flesh out the themes. Emotional moments or greater context about Emma’s motives and reasoning behind her troubling past youth, are only vaguely explored in a shallow light, or glossed over quickly to leave much more be desired. Most emotionally complexed and more grounded moments away from absurdity, at times land as all but a simple checkpoint to prove it’s capable of giving raw emotion, attempting to hide the fact that it lacks a more nuanced commentary on these trials couples go through. It’s more interested in exploring the thrilling shock of the situation that can grapple onto audience attention, rather than trying to find time in the last act or so to fully commit to the deeper emotion it has the potential to offer. Borgli’s attempt at dark comedy can prevail as clever and subtle at social commentary, but sometimes the comedy and perpetual thrill is more than fun, but an obvious waving flag that Borgli’s interested in fully tackling the more complex themes of the drama at hand isn’t exactly there too often.
It attempts at times to be morally challenging, trying to make you question the validity of forgiving each of their actions. The problem there lies that the morals of each action and whether you should forgive them is already laid out from the beginning, leaving the rest of the movie to turn any further depth into twisted humour rather than searching into Emma’s past trauma. It’s clear that she’s hardly in the wrong and should be forgiven. Emma’s actions and mental state was left behind in the past, as following that past she had clear regret and desire to be a changed person empathy is easy to extend for her in that scenario and it doesn’t ask you to come up with answers, but more so asks the characters to. The real lesson the film shows is the lack of empathy our generation shows. Instead of looking into the full nuance of what Emma could have been going through at that time to become that person, characters like Rachel spiral out into anger thinking she’s a physcopath, taking her horrible secret at face value from its severerity. The throughline is that modern discourse over understanding people has gone down the drain to turn into making vague assumptions about the person instead of taking time to fully assess the complexity of the situation.
Despite some flaws in fleshing out themes, more nuance comes from the two lead performances. Pattinson plays a socially inept introvert which alone adds context to his character’s motives. His obvious incompetent awkwardness in the situation reveals not only that reserved persona not used to going full throttle into conflict, but also reveals someone deeply in distraught and disbelief of the newfound information, struggling to make sense of its implications on their future together. His foolish desperation reveals a subtle hint of loneliness and deep desire to salvage their relationship, aware of the possibility that his introverted awkwardness could prevent him from ever finding another lover as good as Emma. Although a bit underused towards the later half of the film, Zendaya still brings a solid portrait of a stressed individual deeply ashamed of her rough, traumatic past seemingly hard to save empathy for. The Drama has many rough edges needed to be smoothened out. it shys away from a more layered narrative and commentary on the limits of loving just because that’s not exactly Borgli’s idea of “fun”, which leaves a lot left to be desired in a sense of the obvious potential this film could’ve reached if he wanted it to. Despite that, it is still very much worthy to give a cinema trip for, with a multitude of laughs, shocks and “what just happened” moments to be had through its unrelenting chaos.
Rating: 3.5/5
