The Drama – Review

Cert – 15, Run-time – 1 hour 45 minutes, Director – Kristoffer Borgli

After discussing the worst thing they’ve ever done with friends, Emma (Zendaya) and Charlie’s (Robert Pattinson) imminent wedding is thrown into turmoil when tensions rise from Emma’s dark confession.

Rarely have I been as tense laughing than during The Drama. Its humour can be dark but not edgy. The tensions come from those in the central relationship between Emma (Zendaya) and Charlie (Robert Pattinson). After a night testing meals and wines for their wedding at the end of the week, alongside their married friends Mike (Mamoudou Athie) and Rachel (Alana Haim), the four find themselves drunkenly discussing the worst things each of them have done. Throughout each story Emma sits awkwardly, fidgeting and trying to show genuine reactions while the back of her mind is clearly worried about things reaching her. By the end of her story the tone has dramatically changed. Friendly, if awkward and occasionally regretful, humour turns to shock and anger at Emma’s past.

The tensions follow the engaged couple to their apartment, and carry on in the build-up to their wedding. Charlie wants to know more, unsure of if he sees his fiancée as the same person, while she’s reluctant to revisit this part of her past (successfully left veiled in the marketing). Instead of jumping back into humour after the reveal, writer-director Kristoffer Borgli channels the darker tones of his previous feature Dream Scenario. There’s an anxiety and tension between the central pairing, a wall put up between them that they’re both staring directly at but hoping there could be a way around it. Zendaya and Pattinson are superb, particularly the former with a layered, full-force performance.

Interactions between the pair in their joint and separate lives are thick with unease. It flows from the screen into the screening room, escalating to the point where you want to cover your eyes or stop from gasping at certain lines of dialogue. There are still plenty of chuckles to be found, captured with a slight coldness from Borgli’s Scandi roots. The cuteness of the opening meet-cute and relationship-so-far fade with a lingering darkness hanging over the film. It’s caught in the dramatic sides as flashes of who Emma could now be in Charlie’s eyes are seen in visions and flashbacks. The balance is well handled through the editing which brings through the sharpness and, as the film points out, a slight look at a wider America, although not becoming a broad, reflective film.

Pacing varies throughout from the gradual table discussion that kicks everything off and excruciating events of the wedding day itself to more frequent beats of flashes of uncertainty and regret faced by the pair. All comes together evenly in a sharply written screenplay and focus editing which forms a consistently entertaining film in both the genuine rom-com beats and the bad or awkward decisions made, largely by Charlie as he tries to cope with what he now knows, in light of the unveiling that feels as if it could break out and more could find out about it at any second whilst avoiding falling into cringe comedy. Unease and tension is rarely this funny.

Sharp, searing and tensely funny there are plenty of laughs from and amongst the unease and darkness of The Drama, helped by two stellar performances from Zendaya and Pattinson, surely two of the best we’ll see this year.