No stranger to offbeat comedy, Norwegian director Kristoffer Borgli’s (Dream Scenario, Sick of Myself) latest comes in the form of The Drama, putting a soon to be married couple to the test against society’s ever performative rituals. With their marriage set to take place at the end of the week, Emma (Zendaya) and Charlie (Robert Pattinson) are busy working on their vows, DJ and photographer hires and what to put on their dinner menu. During the course of one too many glasses of wine with their best friends Rachel (Alana Haim) and Mike (Mamoudou Athie), Emma blurts out in a round of ‘worst things you’ve ever done’ that (spoiler!) when she was fifteen, she planned to execute a shooting at her high school. Setting off a gradual twist of bafflement, tension and uncertainties, The Drama’s domino effect spirals into a stress inducing meltdown leading up to their wedding day. In many parts a hypnotic train wreck, the absurd degree that the film pivots towards and how much weight of what’s to follow after Emma’s secret is revealed results in a strong divide of whether or not you’re on board for the rest of Borgli’s wild ride.
Starting off as a meet-cute in a coffee shop, Charlie approaches Emma in a bumbling manner, commenting on the book she’s reading only to find out she’s deaf in one ear. Initially stating that she’s had her condition since birth, Emma’s confession a week before their wedding day dismantles everything that Charlie believed he knew about his soon-to-be-bride when she drunkenly discloses that she became hard of hearing from shooting practice with her dad’s rifle. Utilizing choppy flashbacks, Emma revisits her adolescent past and the emotional anguish and instability she faced that led up to almost carrying out a shooting, while Charlie recounts his memories with Emma, re-evaluating if she’s who he believes her to be at all. Arguably it’s Charlie’s sanity that plummets as the wedding nears closer, extending the question of how much we truly really know anyone and whether Emma’s secret is simply a scapegoat for Charlie’s pre-martial jitters.
This not being Borgli’s first dark-comedy, it does situate itself in a clumsy position of taking a universal sobering topic and treading a fine line between drama and cringe humor. Perhaps delving further into the various insights, emotions, and psychological impact between the film’s four main protagonists in regards to school shootings might have made for a more intriguing and thoughtful premise rather than getting so wrapped up in the loadedness of the reveal and making the characters fairly predictable and one-dimensional. While the film maintains a more subtle and believable comedic uneasiness at the start, it quickly escalates into convenient chaos. The Drama is certain to stir up controversial conversation, yet at the same time it struggles to find its place between believable drama and uncomfortable humor for the sake of uncomfortableness.
