Days before your wedding, your partner tells you a terrible secret. In their youth they almost committed a terrible crime, a crime that is unforgivable for many. However, they never went through with it and deeply regretted even thinking about it. How would you react to such a secret? Does it change the way you view your potential spouse? Does it force you to recontextualize your relationship with them? Does it make you think that they can do it again? Have they truly changed as a person or are they secretly putting on a performance? These uncomfortable questions are at the heart of Kristoffer Borgli’s cringe (complimentary) romantic comedy, The Drama.
SPOILER WARNING
Emma (Zendaya, Euphoria) and Charlie (Robert Pattinson, Mickey 17) are a happily engaged couple who are days before their dream wedding. However, after they are dared by their best friends, Rachel (Alana Haim, Licorice Pizza) and Mike (Mamoudou Athie, Kinds of Kindness) to reveal the worst thing they have ever done, the couple’s relationship is put to the test as it sends their wedding off the rails.
So what did Emma do to cause her wedding with Charlie to go off the rails? Spoilers in 3, 2, 1. She planned a school shooting when she was in high school but never went through with it. Right off the bat, Kristoffer Borgli immediately puts his audience, especially Americans, in an uncomfortable scenario. It’s a deeply triggering subject for many people that sure did spur a couple of walk outs in my own theater. However, The Drama is not about school shootings or what causes someone to become a school shooter. Treating the subject as a catalyst for The Drama’s theme. This is a film about judgement. How we assign it, how we perform it, and what it says about it.
When Charlie learns of this secret about Emma, he is clearly shocked and traumatized. He begins recontextualizing their relationship, looking at any potential red flags he could have missed that would have hinted at her darker past. He begins looking at Emma differently as he is not sure if she is truly who she says he is. He seeks advice from friends, but they cast absolute judgement over Emma saying he should leave her ASAP. All the while, Emma is not only forced to live with the guilt of what she almost did, but now she is being judged for an act that she did not commit. And on top of that, she realizes that her confession may just detonate her relationship with Charlie and her closest friends. So when the couple finally met again after being separated for a couple of hours, they began talking through this issue. However, the clock is working against them and there is no clean way to outrun this conundrum.
If this revelation came months or even weeks before their wedding, they easily could have navigated this issue with long discussions and some therapy. However, this couple doesn’t have time to navigate it as their wedding is days away. So what follows is a suffocating odyssey of secondhand embarrassment and raw discomfort. You’re stuck alongside Charlie and Emma as they try to navigate this crisis on a tight deadline. And Borgli doesn’t let you look away as he stretches the tension to its breaking point, making you sit in every strained pause or any misfired attempt at normalcy.
Before this revelation, the film plays like a slightly off-kilter romcom through Borli’s sensibilities. Charlie and Emma have a combustible energy as they match each other’s freak. But when the secret surfaces, the entire film recalibrates. The editing, cinematography, and sound design is off just enough to make you uncomfortable and uneasy. As this awkwardness is textured into every frame. Stability is no longer there in this relationship and you feel it in every second of this film.
And by the end of the film, there is no easy catharsis for this couple nor a moral resolution to make yourself feel good. Borgli isn’t interested in that. Instead, he leaves you setting with the same unease that built up throughout the entire film’s runtime. Forcing you to interrogate not just Emma, Charlie, and their friends, but your own instinct to judge others. Combining love, fear and morality into a morally grey area, The Drama forces you to be uncomfortable with your own morals and ethics. Not asking you if Charlie and Emma will have their happily ever after, but how you will respond to this situation.
My Rating: A-
The Drama is now playing in theaters Nationwide.
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