Reviewed: ‘The Drama’
Dark rom-com with likable leads packs a big wallop--one certain to polarize.
The latest from off-kilter impresario Kristoffer Borgli is a dark, sardonic rom-com with a sharp morality barb — one so pointed and polarizing that it will repel many viewers. Others will be provoked, but still hop on board with Borgli’s go-for-broke vision. Of course, the real reason we’re all on tenterhooks about “The Drama,” starring hot properties Zendaya and Robert Pattinson as an engaged couple, is because the movie was shot here in Cambridge and Boston, with a pivotal scene playing out at Porter Square stalwart Andy’s Diner.
The one thing “The Drama” is not: predictable. It’s also surprisingly funny in awkward, uncomfortable ways. As with “Dream Scenario” (2023), Borgli plants his biggest twists in small, mundane scenes. Things begin innocuously as Pattinson’s Charlie eyes Zendaya’s Emma at a Back Bay Tatte, where she’s reading a novel (it’s fictional fiction, although it shares the name as real novel by Caitlin Wahrer). He’s instantly smitten, looks up the book online, and pretends to have read it for his goofy, gawky overture. Emma ignores him. It’s not a classic cold shoulder, though: An earbud blasts beats in one of her ears, concealed by hair, and the other is deaf — the why of it, revealed later, packs a twist worthy of a Wes Anderson film.
Small hurdles aside, we learn that Charlie’s a museum curator at the fictional Cambridge Art Museum (filmed in the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover) and that Emma works for a literary agency/publisher. Before long, they’re sharing a cozy, split-level brownstone apartment in Back Bay. All of this romantic bliss moves along sleepily and without much cause for alarm — or drama — until Charlie and Emma meet up with besties (the bridesmaid and groomsman-to-be) Mike (Mamoudou Athie, the quiet stable anchor in the film) and Rachel (Alana Haim, “Licorice Pizza”) and get into a boozy confessional about the worst things they’ve ever done. For Mike, it’s using a date as a human shield from an attacking dog; for Rachel, it’s locking a neurodiverse kid in a closet; and for Charlie it doesn’t matter much because Emma’s reveal is so dark, indelible, and contentious. It’s a record-scratch moment, so jarring that Mike and Rachel leave, implying they’re also out of the wedding. Charlie is left agog in the aftermath. I cannot in good faith give you the spoiler even though it comes about 20 minutes in. I’ll just say Emma’s confessional is a grenade toss in a gas station.
The rest of the film follows Charlie trying to work his way through what this new and disturbing information means for him and his relationship with Emma as their nuptials loom. Pattinson’s shaggy-dog conveyance of Charlie’s internal conflict and vulnerability carries the film. Zendaya’s Emma comes off morally amorphous, aloof, and flat — an affect that worked in films like “Challengers” (2024) and the “Dune” series, but not here. It’s frustrating: You want the dots of Emma then and now to connect, but it’s unconvincing. About the closest we get is Jordyn Curet as young Emma dealing with teen trauma, tossing us bread crumbs of insight to reconcile the bleak past with the promising present. It’s a spot-on turn by Curet that flags her as a promising talent.
Other parts of “The Drama” — a lame name with earned, but uninspired, reasoning — that work are the nonlinear plotting, agile editing, and plucky performance by Hailey Gates as Charlie’s droll coworker. The rapid pacing of the rewinds and forward jumps helps cement the current action and, by uneasy proximity, delivers some bitingly humorous moments. Then there’s the spare woodwind arrangement by Daniel Pemberton, both breezy and grating, aptly underscoring the emotional tension in each frame.
The controversies surrounding the film are not all fictional. Borgli has recently received negative attention because of an essay he wrote in 2012 about dating a 17-year-old when he was 27. The teen was over the age of consent, but like the repugnant secret in the movie, morally and ethically, akin to learning your sibling is a longtime Trump supporter.
Folks coming to “The Drama” for onscreen sparks between its leads will be disappointed. The initial bombshell is followed by a series of muted combustions, and Charlie and Emma spend much of the film apart. When they are together, they’re performing perfunctory pre-wedding tasks — confronting a parade of bad wedding DJs and dealing with the quirky florist — and an episode of projectile vomiting doesn’t bode well for passion. It’s an edgy, uneven path to the altar. Yet into that void falls Andy’s, our beloved forever spot, so inviting and Hopper-esque in its framing that it nearly steals the film.
this article ran previously in the Cambridge Day