The Drama

On a recent episode 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 bond challenged when Pattinson's Charlie discovers an unsettling truth about Zendaya's Emma that makes him 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 at all with who she seems to be. That's kind of the point, and it's why Charlie has such a hard time squaring this information with the woman he's known and shared his life with over the past couple of years. Still, while Borgli's screenplay goes out of its way to try to make everything we learn plausible, it's hard to picture how the adolescent Emma we learn about was transformed into someone who looks and acts like the vivacious, 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 its 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 but feel this would be a bolder, more daring film (not to mention more credible) if the genders had been swapped and it were the guy revealing this truth about his youth to his bride-to-be. 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. Or, even if Emma had just 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. (Do we have contemporary young actresses in the vein of Jennifer Jason Leigh or Juliette Lewis? Do they let them headline movies these days?)

Despite never fully accepting that the young girl we see in flashbacks could ever grow into the twentysomething we see for most of the movie, The Drama won me over because of how funny it is. Also, Pattinson gives an exceptional performance. Watching him wrestle with wherever his imagination takes him and stumble into big mistakes that just make the situation worse is hilarious. And despite a few lines of dialogue that sacrifice reality for easy laughs, the script is worthy of this terrific 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, as the maid of honor and best man, and a wonderful 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 transgressive and still fully relatable. We are not kept at a safe distance, laughing at these characters; we feel like we're going through all this with them, which, for me, makes it a good comedy.