REVIEW. THE DRAMA battles its own emotional conundrum.
- MaryAnn Janosik
- 2 hours ago
- 9 min read
Note: No specific spoilers are given for the movie in this review though, if you have access to a smart phone or any type of social media, The Drama's big reveal is hardly a secret anymore.
What would you do if, days before your wedding, you found out that your fiancé had done something (or planned to) so heinous that you begin to question everything about that individual, your relationship and the future? That's the premise writer-director Kristoffer Borgli uses to show what he's called the very "personal crisis" museum curator Charlie Thompson (Robert Pattinson) faces when his beautiful fiancé Emma Harwood (Zendaya), a bookstore clerk, discloses a very dark secret from her past just days before their carefully curated wedding. Emotions are heightened, questions are raised, judgments passed, and general chaos emotional (and physical) ensues. And that's just from Charlie, whose reaction becomes the movie's unfortunate focus.
Unfortunate because Borgli has given us a lot to chew on, to ruminate over, to discuss over a cup of coffee or a glass of the skin-contact wine Charlie can't decide if he likes, except that he never really develops any of the ethical or philosophical questions he raises early on. Borgli drops his existential bombshell twenty minutes in, and then lets us watch Charlie spin in ways that are sometimes comedic, but most times annoying and, by the end of the film, frustratingly petty.
The movie - marketed as a romantic comedy-drama (does that make it a drom-com?) - begins in typical rom-com fashion: Emma and Charlie meet cute at a local diner, when he tries to introduce himself by feigning interest in a book she's reading. When she doesn't seem to respond to his advances (turns out she's deaf in the ear he's whispering into, a detail that will be important later), Emma suggests that they "start fresh," a reboot that leads to dinner and then a montage of courtship-related activities, from walks interspersed with moments of sexual bliss, to Charlie's sweet, awkward marriage proposal.
Less than fifteen minutes in, Charlie and Emma are in the final stages of planning their wedding, which includes finalizing the reception menu. Sitting at the venue with best man Mike ((Mamodou Athie) and maid of honor Rachel (Alana Haim), after sampling too little food and too much wine, Rachel goads everyone into sharing the worst thing they'd ever done, which is probably not a good idea even if sober. At any rate, when a tipsy Emma finally reveals the dark secret she's been haboring since she was fifteen, the other three are dumbfounded... but not so much that they refrain from expressing immediate, visceral judgments about Emma and her past behavior.
This is where the movie started to fail for me. For one thing, Emma's indiscretion is probably the most understandable of the four secrets, given what we learn about her childhood. In fact, she never really acted on the "crime" she contemplated committing. The other three shared bad behavior that seems far more concerning, given that these were acts each one got away with, cruel and vicious deeds that had serious consequences for the victims, stunts that could easily be replicated in some form as adults. Rachel, in particular, seemed the cruelest of all recounting her inhumane treatment of childhood neighbor, yet she is (surprise?) the most critical and least empathetic toward Emma's disclosure.
Then there's Charlie, an educated Brit working as "head curator" at the Cambridge Art Museum in Boston, who seemingly has zero self-awareness and even less compassion for the woman he claims is the "love of his life." Sure, her adolescent struggles were serious, but the woman she has become seems to merit more praise than derision. It is to Pattinson's credit that Charlie doesn't descend into complete buffonery, but there's too much of him and not enough of Emma in Brogli's exploration of the dealbreakers that can challenge and destroy romantic ideals.
In flashbacks, teenage Emma is played by another actress, Jordyn Curet. Curet is fine, though having two actresses play out Emma's story using a series of very quick-cut flashbacks, makes it more difficult for the very talented Zendaya to establish more visually the arc of Emma's emotional journey. There's not enough of an age gap between young and adult Emma to merit two actresses. If you've watched Zendaya grow up in front of the camera, you know that, though she has matured physically, she does not look dramatically different from her early years as a Disney star, and Brogli doesn't make the internal link between Curet and Zendaya compelling enough to bridge their adolescent isolation with lingering adult pain.
In contrast, Emerald Fennell was very successful connecting young Cathy and Heathcliff (Charlotte Mellington and Owen Cooper) to their adult counterparts (Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi) with very precise close-ups of facial expressions (the eyes especially) which not only convey their pubescent pain but also translate it seamlessly to their adult passion and yearning. You believe Robbie and Elordi are the grown-up Mellington and Cooper, not just by character name and appearance, but through emotion and heart.
Another element I found off-putting was Brogli's decision to make the character with the most despicable past, Emma, and to have her played by a woman of color. If he was trying to comment on how privileged white people are smug, rash, superficial and foolish in their assessment of others, the satire wasn't clear. Charlie and Emma live in an appropriately upscale loft complete with the usual expensive, trendy furniture and carefully chosen Bohemian chic accoutrements. Their friends all have the requisite white collar jobs with impressive salaries. And yet, I couldn't help but wonder why Emma would even want to associate with the likes of these shallow, entitled idiots. Zendaya infuses in Emma an air of genuine maturity and class that seems way beyond the callowness of her friends and fiancé, but she's underused and, like her secret, seems to fade in importance as Charlie's behavior becomes more bizarre and his crisis reaches its breaking point.
Ultimately, Brogli's story culminates at the wedding reception where more indiscretions are revealed, and Charlie has a meltdown giving his toast to Emma. More bedlam before the movie wraps up where it started, though Brogli leaves a bit of ambiguity as to the future of Charlie and Emma as a couple: maybe it's a fresh start, or maybe it's left in a kind of post-nuptial limbo so that we can project our individual hopes for them as we leave the theater.
Amidst all this discorder, what remained missing for me was the why. In his rush to get to the movie's big dilemma, Brogli forget to show us why Charlie and Emma are so in love. Why is this a love worth fighting for, despite the dark secrets revealed and the moral queries they raise? No shade on Zendaya and Pattinson - they are both fine actors. But there wasn't a genuine chemistry expressed between Charlie and Emma that conveys the depth of their connection. Only incomplete moments and lots of uncertainty. Maybe that was Brogli's intention.
If so, he undercut the very profound questions he poses about how well we really know those we profess to love, and what circumstances would destroy the most intimate of human connections. In this way, Brogli continues the kind of intellectual and emotional sterility present in his earlier features, Sick of Myself (2022) and Dream Scenario (2023), both surreal, satirical black comedies that feel unfinished in terms of the developing the probing philosophical themes Brogli presents in each story.
The Drama did get me thinking, though, especially about Borgli's insistence that his film is meant to be an intimate story about an individual circumstance without making presumptions about broader philosophical issues. It is, after all, a kind of twisted rom-com that raises broader questions about the ideas behind movies versus the final execution of those concepts.
That said, here's a final question: If given the choice, would you rather see a movie that has a great concept at its core, but doesn't quite deliver OR a slick, conventional story you can figure out in the first few minutes? Hold your response for moment.
Traditional romantic comedies (rom-com's) usually contain plenty of conflicts, silly mishaps, and even ridiculous situations - all of which are neatly resolved by the time the credit roll. They weren't originally known as screwball comedies for nothing. Yet, no matter what the cinematic nomenclature, these movies were meant to make audiences feel good: no matter how improbable the setup, there was always a happy ending.
Then along came Annie Hall, Woody Allen's loving homage to then-girlfriend Diane Keaton, tge 1978 winner for Best Picture are rare for a rom-com, a film that quietly transformed the rom-com genre by reimaging what a "happy ending" is. If you've not seen Annie Hall (and why not, I may ask?), there's a spoiler ahead: Annie (Keaton) and on-again/off-again lover Alvy (Allen) don't get together in the end, but their parting more wistful than sad. Allen and co-screenwriter Marshall Brickman instead focus on the beauty of Annie and Alvy's mismatched goya/putz relationship, arguably born out of too many differences to be sustainable, but ultimately a once-in-a-lifetime experience for each, one that would have made them lesser had they missed their emotionally game-changing romance.
Allen showed us that love, with all its complications and idiosyncracies, is still worth the trouble, even if you don't ride off into the sunset together. What if marriage with a lifetime commitment wasn't the penultimate goal in life? I probably have enough material for at least another blog post if I culled all the comments I've gotten from friends, students and colleagues over the years on this one, but Allen's take on the "drama" that often makes its way into what ought to be a joyous, carefree courtship, opened the door for other, more unconventional love stories, from Rob Reiner's iconic When Harry Met Sally (1989) to Noah Baumbach's Frances Ha (2012) and Paul Thomas Anderson's Licorice Pizza (2021).
If filmmakers like Jordan Peale, Bong Joon Ho and Ryan Coogler, continue to redefine the horror genre, why not do the same for this generation of rom-com lovers? A few years ago, writer/director Richard Linklater offered up an excellent, if unfortunately straight-to-streaming, reinvention of the rom-com with a dark twist called Hit Man. In it, a geeky college professor with an equally bland name, Gary Johnson (a totally engaging Glen Powell), who moonlights as tech support for the local police department's sting operations, gets recruited to go undercover when one of the cops he works with is suspended. Powell's character becomes so enamoured with the sexiness of his part-time gig that he gets carried away by his success snagging his potential criminals...until he falls in love with one of his perps.
Mayhem follows as more and more secrets are kept, then revealed, leading up a still satisfying, if morally ambiguous, conclusion. Dark humor abounds throughout, and Linklater leaves you smiling even if the final frame opens the door to more ethical questions.. With a very sharp, tight script that is as quick as it is funny, Hit Man is a great first step toward reinventing yet again the sometimes predictable nature of a traditional rom-com with intelligence, dark humor and a provocative edge that elevates the moral quandry that frames its core.
So which type of movie do I prefer: a flawed risk or a familiar story? I'll take the risk any day, even if my expectations aren't quite met or my sense of satisfaction is left hanging. Gives me something to think about. Besides, I'm a sucker for rom-com-drams the way Alvy Singer in Annie Hall is drawn to the adventure of romance, even it's not forever. It's like the old joke Alvy references at the end of film: A guy goes to the doctor and says, "My brother thinks he's a chicken." "Why don't you turn him in?" the doctor queries. "I would, but...you know, I need the eggs."
Yup. That's it. In spite of The Drama's failure to deliver either compelling emotion or a satisfying romance, its premise was interesting enough for me to stay until the end... and then continue to ponder its value. Overall, it's worth a look. Except for one thing: Can we please refrain from showing repeated projectile vomiting as the expected result of inebriation? Enough already. I get it, and I don't need to toss my popcorn or anything else.
Well, maybe the eggs.
*******
The Drama is currently playing in theaters. It is rated R for mild, jealous male violence, strong sexual content, disturbing thematic images and dreamlike flashbacks, and profanity. Depending on its box office success, it will be streaming later this summer or early fall.
Final Note: In case you missed - and are interested in reading - any of MJ's previous reviews, here are links to Kristoffer Brogli's Dream Scenario, Ryan Coogler's Sinners, Richard Linklater's Hit Man, and Emerald Fennell's "Wuthering Heights" (just available to stream on PrimeVideo and AppleTV), all referenced in the review here.
Dream Scenario
Sinners
Hit Man
"Wuthering Heights"