by Adrian Nguyen
Worth: $15.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Alana Haim, Mamoudou Athie, Hailey Gates, Sydney Lemmon
Intro:
… romantic comedy with Bergman-esque mysteries …
A Wedding on the Verge of a Breakdown!
The Guardian has reported on a backlash towards The Drama, because the revelation central to the film’s premise, threatening to ruin the incoming marriage between Robert Pattinson’s Charlie and Zendaya’s Emma, has offended someone. In the film, this twist destroys the trust of their friends, adding a sly meta-commentary that overall enhances its argument – if the worst thing you did in your past life hasn’t been disclosed to each other, would you even be together?
By smoothly combining romantic comedy with Bergman-esque mysteries, The Drama is part of the fashionable aesthetic of social-anxiety horror, in which situations are broken down through the intense fear of not fitting in. Think of Friendship, which saw Tim Robinson as an abject failure in making friends.
These characters serve as a surrogate avatar of our own limitations. We don’t know much about Charlie and Emma besides their upper-middle-class neuroses, but that’s probably by design. Yet this choice manages to be more effective through writer/director Kristoffer (Dream Scenario, Sick of Myself) Borgli’s ability to increase tension through quick, smash cuts, expanding on the actor’s facial expression before moving through nightmare scenarios, then landing on moments of complete mundanity to fool the spectator; it is more interested in emotion, rather than character or social depth, but it plays it well.
This is the second release in a row [Die My Love] where Pattinson plays a partner who’s also a bumbling idiot, while his spouse unleashes her own problems out in the ether. But here, it makes more sense, and the actor does it with more conviction and presence. Zendaya, typically famous for her deadpan persona, is fine here, but her character surprisingly gets less complex as the film continues.
Ultimately, the twist isn’t about the revelation, but who will suffer more from it. When does it stop being embarrassing, and could it become sinister? This is key in understanding the film, and the execution, far from tasteless, should make the bad publicity its charm arsenal for audiences.
