The Drama

On a recent epsisode of The Brattle Film Podcast, I was lamenting that we don't get adult romantic comedy-dramas anymore—or "coming of adulthood movies" as my co-host Ned called them. Then the next film I I happened to see was this romantic dark-comedy-drama from the Norwegian provocateur Kristoffer Borgli. The Drama, the latest from the writer/director of Sick of Myself and Dream Scenario, isn't exactly a coming-of-adulthood movie. Like Borgli's prior films it is an extreme social satire grounded in relatable emotions and realities. Zendaya and Robert Pattinson play an engaged couple who, just days before their wedding, have their loving bond challenged when Pattinson's Charlie discovers an unsettling truth about Zendaya's Emma that causes him to question everything he thought he knew about his betrothed. What's revealed is indeed the type of information that would make pretty much anyone look at their significant other differently.

As a stickler for narrative logic, I had a hard time fully accepting the premise of The Drama once it was revealed, because what Emma explains about her childhood doesn't align with who she seems to be. That's kind of the point, and it's the reason Charlie has such a hard time squaring this information with the women he's know and shared his life with for past couple of years. Still, while Borgli's screenplay goes out of it's way to try to make everything we learn plausible, it's still hard to picture how the adolescent Emma we come to understand, transformed into someone who looks and acts like the vivacious and seemingly always camera-ready Zendaya. The Drama is the type of movie that's going to get as much praise for how bold and daring it is in both it's premise and tone as it will get panned as insensitive or in bad taste.

As much as I enjoyed the premise and tone, I can't help feel this would be a more bold and daring film (not to mention more credible) if the genders had been swapped and it was the guy revealing this truth about his youth to his bride to be. Or, similarly, if Emma had been played by an actress with a little more edge or who doesn't seem to have everything so well put together the way Zendaya does. I think that version of this film would have been more challenging, the way Dream Scenario made you deeply sympathetic to the not exactly lovable character Nicolas Cage played.

Despite bumping on this issue during almost the entire of the film's second act, The Drama won me over because of how funny it is. Also, Pattinson gives an exceptional performance. Watching him wrestle with overlapping terrible thoughts and stumble into mistakes that just make the situation worse is really funny. And despite a few lines of dialogue that sacrifice reality for easy laughs, the script is worthy of this great performance. In an era of lazy "cringe comedy," The Drama stands out as a rare contemporary movie that genuinely makes you feel uncomfortable laughing at what it presents. Borgli, Zendaya, and especially Pattinson—along with great supporting turns by Alana Haim and Mamoudou Athie and as the maid of honor and best man, and a brilliant late-in-the-picture appearance by Hailey Gates as one of Charlie's co-workers—manage to make everything feel just credible and palatable enough for the film to be both satisfyingly transgresive and still totally relatable. We are not kept at a safe distance, laughing at these characters; we see ourselves in them and feel like we're going through all this with them, and that makes it a good comedy.