This article is spoiler-free.
There is a certain kind of hedonism involved with the intense cringe-humor of movies like Kristoffer Borgli’s “The Drama.” These sorts of films don’t necessarily fall under the same genre, but what ties them together is the audience’s desire to run far away from the theater and thank God they aren’t in those characters’ positions. People are placed into impossibly tense and consistently uncomfortable environments without any hope of resolution.
Recent examples include the Safdie Anxiety Trilogy, consisting of “Good Time,” “Uncut Gems” and “Marty Supreme.” In these three, the plot is accelerated to a blistering pace by the urgency or delusion of the main character. In short, my mother would rather eat a bowl of drywall than watch any of these movies.
Unlike those films, “The Drama” isn’t a thriller. It’s technically a romantic comedy, though you have to squint a bit to see where that pulls through. Charlie, played by Robert Pattinson, and Emma, played by Zendaya, have an innocuous meet-cute that is immediately offset by a twist I wouldn’t dare spoil. Without saying much, Charlie learns something about Emma’s past that changes his entire perspective on her. Over the next hour or so, Charlie is plunged into a Safdiean underworld of his own anxiety.
Charlie is a British expatriate, like Norwegian director Kristoffer Borgli, who isn’t entirely assimilated into American culture or ideology. The tension between his sensibilities and what the usually loud and unhelpful Americans around him tell him to do confuses his unimaginably difficult position. He must decide if what he has learned about Emma is enough to call off their imminent wedding.
Emma, though troubled for reasons clear to the viewer, is not the villain of this story; Charlie isn’t escaping from a fairy tale-esque troll. In many ways she is more of a victim than Charlie is. She has faced ostracization and bullying throughout her whole life and her closest friend is a work companion, played by Alana Haim, who turns on her after learning about what Emma did. Emma has the unfortunate job of putting the pieces of her life back together.
Borgli has a rotten sense of humor that he wields to make us all squirm. We aren’t sure if we should laugh at some of the jokes, but that’s exactly what Borgli intended. He has a captive audience. His goal isn’t for us to laugh at his jokes but rather to revel in the tension and question how we view ourselves. Many will be quick to write this film off as pretentious or irresponsible in its dealing with the subject matter, but I contend that “The Drama” is a pitch-black, yet somewhat hopeful criticism of American culture at large. We create drama. We stoke the flames. We pretend like we aren’t part of the problem.
Alana Haim’s character has the responsibility of representing much of this in a passive aggressive maid of honor speech near the end of the movie. My heart goes out to you, Haim, for withstanding misplaced criticism and accepting challenging roles for the duration of your acting career. I will tolerate no slander of her performances in this film, “Licorice Pizza” or “One Battle After Another.”
The argument for “The Drama” as a rom-com is clear: despite its discomfort, it is undeniably one of the most romantic movies of the year. The central conflict of the film asks us how much our partner’s past matters when deciding if we will spend the rest of our life with them; how much can we believe that our partners are not the people they used to be. In this way, the film ends on an optimistic note. Charlie and Emma shouldn’t care about the exterior perceptions of their relationship. After all, it’s only the two of them in it together.
Grade: B+