The Drama: When Pre-Wedding Jitters Shoot Sky High
By Kim Hughes
Rating: A
In the crafty hands of writer-director Kristoffer Borgli, the dubious axiom of “don’t ask don’t tell” takes on a new though no less subversive meaning in The Drama. It’s an exceedingly black comedy threaded through with intense drama that completely deconstructs the rom-com, casting it as both a shiny and sinister thing… and one frequently inducing vomiting.
It all starts pleasantly enough. In a Cambridge, Massachusetts café, British expat museum curator Charlie (Robert Pattinson, sporting strikingly dishevelled hair throughout) spots American literary editor Emma (Zendaya) quietly reading. Their meet-cute is lovely if torn from a familiar playbook. We think we know where this is headed. But we are wrong.
The couple’s magical ensuing courtship is recreated retrospectively during their present-day preparations for their fast-incoming wedding, which includes dance lessons, leading to one of the film’s most disarmingly pretty scenes. These leads are lovely to behold.
But a confession made soon after the dance at a boozy dinner with Mike and Rachel (Mamoudou Athie and Alana Haim) — the betrothed’s best man and maid of honour who happen to be married to each other — lands like a needle yanked across vinyl, detouring the film’s course.
As the trailer discloses, the quartet plays a spontaneous game of revealing past transgressions. Emma goes last and admits something on a level way beyond what’s come before. Disturbing? Indubitably. But people can change, right? Or can they?
The revelation ripples out dramatically, instantly fracturing Emma’s relationship with Rachel while upending everything Charlie thought he knew about his bride-to-be, including who or what really lurks beneath her sunny exterior.
Intense tonal shifts in films often point to a wobbly vision but Borgli’s transitions from present to past — and funny to frightening — and shot through with fantasy sequences are exhilarating. It’s never certain where The Drama is going until it gets there. Yet every moment makes perfect sense, with scenes fitting together like Tetris tiles and often constructed just as angularly.
Great comedy and dread are extracted from Charlie’s sudden, shattering uncertainty about Emma and whether a future with her is desirable or even possible. Ditto Emma’s apparent late-stage regret. It’s marvellously squishy and unnerving to watch, especially since everyone around the couple has an opinion. Meanwhile, Emma’s past offence triggers new bad behaviours among those ostensibly on higher ground. Ethics, it seems, can be slippery.
Enormous credit goes to the cast, who are uniformly sterling, making the most of this terrifically inventive script. To wit, in a conventional rom-com, Haim’s Rachel would be the cheerleading (or gay male) BFF to Emma’s suddenly tortured soul.
Here, she is unapologetically shrill and judgmental, which affords her one of the film’s spikiest speeches. And there’s a few. Even peripheral characters like Charlie and Emma’s cranky dance teacher, zealous wedding photographer, and possibly drug-enthusiast wedding DJ are tossed tofu to chew, fuelling the narrative.
Borgli and producer Ari Aster have successfully collaborated before, notably on 2023’s unhinged Dream Scenario with Nicolas Cage, and their giddy exultation of the preposterous is golden.
The Drama never lets its audience forget the intense love Emma and Charlie feel for each other, which makes the stakes for their potential marriage or breakup feel palpably, incredibly high. Meanwhile, the film asks: since when do any of us ever know what dwells in the hearts or minds of others? Moreover, do we really want to?
Talk about engaging.
The Drama. Written and directed by Kristoffer Borgli. Starring Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Alana Haim and Mamoudou Athie. In theatres April 3.