‘The Drama’ Review: Zendaya Gets a Case of the Mondays in Kristoffer Borgli’s Twisted Marriage Story [C+]
In the promotional materials leading up to Kristoffer Borgli’s pitch-black romantic comedy, The Drama, the film’s stars, Zendaya and Robert Pattinson, smartly leaned into the artifice and pageantry of the wedding-industrial complex. Aesthetically pleasing “Save the Date” cards and mock engagement photos felt designed to pull in an audience eager for a sparkling romance, while also operating as a clever bait-and-switch. What lurks beneath the shiny veneer of a gilded wedding invitation? What does “for better or for worse” truly mean when it’s spoken in a declaration of the wedding vows? The Drama pulls these ideas apart through its early climactic reveal, pushing the romantic comedy and marriage plot into controversial yet conventional territory. If it’s not love, then it’s the bombshell that will keep them together.
Film history’s best romantic comedies incorporate a memorable meet-cute between the two protagonists, and The Drama establishes the relationship between Charlie (Robert Pattinson) and Emma (Zendaya) with an introduction that is equal parts charming and cringe-inducing. Charlie is walking by a coffee shop and spots Emma reading a book; he must meet her. After he wanders inside, he Googles the title of her book (the fictional, “The Damage” by Harper Ellison) and does a little bit of research to establish common ground. He hasn’t read the book, but he needs an in to begin talking to her. When he finally works up the courage to introduce himself, she seemingly ignores him, as the film’s clever sound design seems to muffle everything that Charlie says. Soon, it’s all a misunderstanding, as Emma turns to Charlie and shares that she’s deaf in one ear and completely missed everything that he’s said to her. In another film, this could feel like a sweet, romantic touch, like when a young Mary Hatch whispers, “Is this the ear you can’t hear out of? George Bailey, I’ll love you till the day I die” in It’s a Wonderful Life. That’s not entirely the case in The Drama, though, as Daniel Pemberton’s off-kilter, Phantom Thread-inspired score signals that something darker might be at play. There’s something sweet about Charlie wanting to impress Emma, and that little white lie is all too relatable in the early days of dating. But Borgli introduces a core tension through a deft drop of dramatic irony. The audience is primarily set up to relate with Charlie, keeping us off-balance and preparing to knock us flat when the story’s reveal arrives.
While Charlie and Emma’s relationship begins with a bit of a rocky foundation (Charlie’s lie), the early years are filled with romantic bliss. In a savvy trick of exposition, Charlie walks his friend and confidante, Mike (Mamoudou Athie), through the speech that he’s planning on giving about Emma at their upcoming wedding. The speech flashes through the first time they meet, their doomed first kiss and subsequent flirtation with museum security, his thoughts about the highly specific way she laughs, and whether or not he should publicly talk about their great sex life. Not only does this scene infuse the film with the romance needed to make The Drama a successful romantic comedy, but it also highlights the strong chemistry between Pattinson and Zendaya. Much like the wedding-industrial complex that the script is critiquing, Charlie and Emma’s relationship is constructed as aspirational. They live in an architectural marvel of an apartment (complete with a spiral staircase), they have hard-to-come-by jobs in Boston as a Museum Curator and Literary Editor, and both look insanely gorgeous in every frame. It’s the type of relationship that anyone would desire without further inspection, but as the film unfolds, Borgli poses two queries. How much do you really want to know about your significant other? Is your love strong enough to sustain the worst possible type of dramatic wrench?
The script makes Charlie’s personality and inner world clear from the start, while Emma is much more of an enigma. When discussing her engagement with Mike’s wife, Rachel (Alana Haim), she shares that Charlie wasn’t just her first love, but really, her first crush. The fact that she had her first crush at twenty-eight is a bit strange to her peers, but it’s still harmless enough that it doesn’t feel like a dealbreaker or a signal of a troubling past. Maybe she was just a late bloomer. Everything changes when Charlie, Emma, Mike, and Rachel get a little wine drunk one night when they’re testing out the catering menu. Mike and Rachel introduce a game of “What’s the Worst Thing You’ve Ever Done?”, sharing that they each revealed this to each other before they got married. After several glasses of wine, the group shares their answers to the prompt (cyberbullying, locking a neighbor boy in the closet in an abandoned van, using an ex-girlfriend as a shield against a violent dog), before Emma reveals a secret so shocking that she threatens the dynamic between the two couples and embosses a scarlet letter upon herself that may be impossible to overlook. The fateful decision she made in her past is in a completely different league from the mean yet comparably trivial things her friends admit to, prompting reactions that range from disbelief (Charlie and Mike) to performative outrage (Rachel). It’s crucial that this secret is revealed so early in the story, as it forces the remainder of the narrative to take a closer look at the fallout. At first, Charlie thinks he can get over it, but soon, it throws his stiff-upper-lip British disposition out of whack. Pattinson is fantastic as Charlie, delivering what is possibly a career-best performance that highlights his strongest traits as an actor. He balances perfectly on the film’s tonal tightrope, creating a character who is simultaneously a swoon-worthy romantic lead, a sharp physical comedian, and a man on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
Even though some “news” outlets have already shared Emma and The Drama’s secret (thanks, TMZ!), the action and Emma’s reason not to go through with her teenage plan are best left unspoiled. The film is far more successful if you are as shocked as Charlie, Mike, and Rachel are when Emma reveals her secret, upholding the film’s ironic tone that challenges what you feel you know about the character in the opening moments of the movie. The reveal itself has already proven incredibly controversial, as it doesn’t just wade into the waters of a hot-button issue but instead throws you underwater with the blunt force of a tidal wave. Borgli doesn’t just introduce Emma’s past through her drunken reveal; he also shows it directly to the audience via flashbacks, using an obvious show-and-tell approach. While played for comedic (and anxiety-inducing) effect, these moments can feel a bit tasteless considering the subject matter. Borgli’s surface-level approach to what is ultimately a systemic American issue evokes the misguided nature of Martin McDonagh’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. The provocation doesn’t feel empty, but it also isn’t nuanced enough to feel entirely warranted.
Charlie thinks he can move past it at first, but soon, he’s unable to see Emma as the person that he fell in love with. Instead, he views little things in their past in a completely new light, where suddenly, a bit of pedestrian road rage or wielding a kitchen knife doesn’t seem so innocent. He also comically sees her solely as the younger version of herself when she thought of committing the crime, an entirely new person that he never knew in the first place. It’s here that The Drama feels no less controversial, but a bit more focused comedically than Borgli’s previous works (Dream Scenario, Sick of Myself). As its mean-spirited comedy coincides with the story’s romance, it comes the closest to resembling an Albert Brooks film. Still, The Drama doesn’t contain that level of subtlety and more easily fits into the style of the team of producers behind it. With Ari Aster (Eddington, Beau Is Afraid), Lars Knudsen (Eddington, Bugonia), and Tyler Campellone (Death of a Unicorn, Eddington) on board, it becomes a bit clearer that The Drama lives comfortably in the shock-and-awe sphere occupied by filmmakers like Aster and Yorgos Lanthimos. It’s a toothless wolf of a movie hiding under sophisticated sheep’s clothing.
The Drama’s strongest moments lie in the “something borrowed” within the plot: its purposeful contrivances of the romantic comedy and the glossy sheen of millennial artifice. The supporting cast shines in these moments, too, with many of them also starring in romantic films and television shows marketed with similar pop packaging. Specifically, the wedding photographer (Zoe Winters, Materialists), their DJ (Sydney Lemmon, Love Story), and Charlie’s coworker, Misha (Hailey Benton Gates, Challengers, The Moment), all get strong comedic scenes that heighten Charlie and Emma’s simmering anxiety. The script begins to unravel, though, in the way Emma is written. Engineering the story to largely center on Charlie and what he knows and doesn’t know creates strong tension and comedy, but by neglecting to explore Emma’s depth, the film falls short of mastering the satirical surface it scratches. There are significant implications in casting a Black woman to play a character whose past is so tied up in the specific type of violence discussed in the screenplay, and Borgli does not explore the complicated nuance of Emma’s identity. As Emma, Zendaya has the difficult task of creating a woman who has the charm and charisma to make Charlie fall in love with her, while also conjuring someone who is completely unknowable with a complicated past. She’s a character who, with stronger writing, could have a more complex interiority in the same league as Gone Girl’s Amy Dunne or Chinatown’s Evelyn Mulwray, but the film never pivots to focus on her character’s perspective. As additional facets of her teenage motivations come to light, there are several untapped opportunities to learn not only how she felt in her childhood but also what she’s going through in the present. Still, Zendaya manages to elevate her character above the writing, making Emma feel genuinely sympathetic despite the violent thoughts of her past.
During several scenes in Emma and Charlie’s apartment, it’s easy to spot a poster for Bergman’s The Passion of Anna on the wall. It’s a startling image of Bergman’s muse, Liv Ullmann, with her mouth open wide, letting a scream escape. Like that film, The Drama hinges on the reveal of a dramatic secret that throws its characters’ lives into disarray, yet its descent into madness doesn’t leave the same lingering effect. It’s telling that as Emma has tried to move on from her past, the people in her life are just as capable of inflicting hurt as she was, only they manage to go through with it. Despite the theatrical chaos that ensues, the heavy lifting of the film’s first section can’t fully pay off, as the small details of Charlie and Emma’s early love story aren’t able to shine through. The Drama has flashes of a fresh spin on the romantic comedy, but after Emma’s past is revealed, it descends into predictable territory and evaporates quickly after the credits roll.
Grade: C+
A24 will release The Drama only in theaters on April 3.
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