Marriage isn’t the sham that people make it out to be if you know what you’re getting into. The love part — probably the easiest. To stay and stand by someone in sickness and in poverty — what does that really mean? In the Catholic-constructed marriage vows that have been repeated for centuries, our experiences and expectations that feed into this individualized stratosphere may make it difficult to come together for an united answer. You and I could come up with good estimations as to why divorce rates had a bump during the pandemic or why women who have a health illness have a higher divorce rate than men who get sick, but these answers most likely won’t be the same as those in the hot seats.
In Kristoffer Borgli’s The Drama, we shouldn’t blame Emma or Charlie for not knowing everything about each other in the week leading up to their wedding day. In fact, I can’t help but think about the many ways that this movie could have played out had the couple been in a different environment on a fatalistic night of drunken confessions that derail their fairytale. Yet, here they are: Emma (Zendaya), Charlie (Robert Pattinson), and their friends Mike (Mamaudou Athie) and Rachel (Alana Haim), inebriated on complimentary wine and sharing secrets that garner various reflexive reactions until one particular confession is revealed.
The secret, which will remain so in this review but probably has splashed around across the Internet by now, is objectively not a good thing to hear, but the film gives it enough space to feel like it could have been received differently among certain crowds. The Drama takes place in an implied liberal city of bustling college grads who can afford brunches at Tatte and tall-windowed apartments (because yes, we’re in Boston!), which accentuates the horrors of societal dissonance. The Drama™ that follows the confession is understandable, and it happens because of how these characters are set up to be. It probably wouldn’t have made a huge difference on what the confession was going to be, but Borgli’s game plan for this film taps into his viewpoint of America in its rhapsodic pride of freedom, consequence and all. The choose-your-villain approach will be tailored to each viewer, though you might find yourself switching seats across the aisle a few times along the way.
As an appreciator of the genre, here’s a common point I find among the crowd: many rom-coms exist in a specific socioeconomic class and unblemished skin complexion. Love leads, despite financial woes and family tension. A24’s recent inverted piece Materialists address the capitalist chokehold on relationships (albeit to mainly white people), while The Drama wags its fingers at different topics without completely finishing its thoughts. In other films, I wonder about race blindness as being part of the script or casting; Borgli seems to make it a point without the neon arrows. It makes for an experience where certain people will pick it up, while others might not think it matters. But that, in addition to the pre-wedding rituals, such as hiring a choreographer to construct your first dance or contemplating firing a DJ for unsavory off-hour habits, can feel alienating, even when I know full well that it’s part of the normalcy. Materialists knows that it can be weird. The Drama will let you ask yourself if it’s weird.
At this point, the vague details about The Drama most likely won’t push you into the theaters unless you want to see what it is about and formulate your own thoughts — that is, if you’re able to coherently string them together. Some of the dramatic scenes are fragmented either chronologically or by imagined conversations that may have been dreamt up by one of the characters to illuminate their inner turmoil. It’s a distracting tactic, especially since Pattinson, one of our modern greats starring in one of his most normie roles, and Zendaya (who, as in Challengers, plays best as the sun that the world orbits around), are capable of expressing the emotions for us. Both leads juggle each other with such finesse that I wish there were fewer attempts at technical disorientation.
Funnily enough, I believe that Borgli truly believes in love at the intersection of the past and future. The relationship between Emma and Charlie is as charming as it can be, and a part of us hopes that it’s not as doomed as the trailer-prophecy foretells. In his push to define love in rugged territories, Borgli wants us to think that love exists at the end of this film, even if the actual ending felt like a marketable compromise to neatly tie everything up. If I were to close out this saga, it would have ended at Charlie, bent and broken at the dinner table, willing himself to forget the whole thing before it began. But like marriage, The Drama‘s trials and tribulations will want us to push past the hard stuff to get to the more scary part: the unknown.
The Drama
2026
dir. Kristoffer Borgli
105 min.
Now playing @ Coolidge Corner Theatre, Somerville Theatre, Kendall Square Cinema, Apple Cinemas Cambridge, Alamo Drafthouse Boston Seaport, and all local AMCs
