'The Drama': Secrets decidedly do not make friends in A24’s latest dark comedy
When “The Drama” began previewing back in January, I watched the first trailer and immediately added it to my Letterboxd watchlist.
Zendaya and Robert Pattinson playing lovers in an A24 dark comedy? Written and directed by Kristoffer Borgli and co-produced by Ari Aster, the creative genius behind “Midsommar” and “Hereditary?” Yeah, I’ve been waiting my whole life for someone to direct this exact movie.
“We’re gonna be seeing this in theaters the night it premiers, okay?” I told Sage, my poor roommate who suffers from my cinephilic rants on the daily. She just nodded and accepted her fate.
“The Drama” is the first of three highly anticipated films that Zendaya and Pattinson star in together this year, followed by Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey" adaptation this summer and “Dune: Part Three” near Christmas. Needless to say, I had high expectations going into the theater. I dragged Sage to the 9:00 p.m. showing on Saturday, April 11 at the Cinemark Century East and settled in with a bucket of popcorn and a cherry Coke, ready to see two of my favorite actors together on the big screen.
Zendaya and Pattinson play Emma and Charlie, a happily engaged couple whose wedding week becomes a drama-fest after a dinner with Charlie’s friends: Rachel (Alana Haim), who is also Emma’s maid of honor, and Rachel’s husband Mike (Mamoudou Athie). When Rachel insists everyone spill the worst thing they have ever done, Emma drunkenly shares a controversial childhood secret which sends the whole affair spiraling into chaos.
The trailers kept Emma’s secret incredibly vague, so all I knew before watching the film was that it would derail the couple’s wedding plans. I won’t spoil it for you, dear reader, but suffice it to say: Emma was a very hormonal teenage girl. She had some serious issues, I will admit — but as a young girl myself, I found her story if not understandable, then sympathetic.
That was my biggest gripe with the film. None of the other characters seem to recognize the insanity that is female adolescence or to cut their supposedly-beloved Emma just an iota of slack. Charlie, the bumbling and slightly uppity Brit he is, allows the drama to uproot everything he believed about Emma and their relationship.
“Emma, I know worse people than you,” he re-writes his wedding vows, deleting the section in which he called her empathetic and kind.
I give him some grace because Emma probably should have told him her secret before getting married. Rachel, however, was the absolute worst in all respects. Haim took the character from your typical passive-aggressive, snotty white girl to a person so awful that it’s genuinely ludicrous. I had no idea why she was Emma’s maid of honor, much less friends with Charlie in the first place.
Point blank, the role was miscast — I’d have suggested Sydney Sweeney.
Kidding, kidding. That would be even worse. But she does a spectacular “mean girl.”
Zendaya and Pattinson gave great performances, both individually and as fiancés. Yearning, fear and a lack of communication skills are tangible in the couple’s interactions as Emma’s secret gets around and their relationship fractures. Pattinson plays Charlie as so harried and hapless that I wished I could reach through the screen and smack him upside the head. Zendaya’s Emma is beautiful and alluringly mysterious, desperate to de-escalate the drama and regain her pre-nuptial bliss.
Harsh, close-up camera shots and dramatic zooms create an anxious and frenetic atmosphere, dialing the film’s already stressful storyline up to a hundred. I could read the anguish on Emma’s face and the desolation on Charlie’s as they tiptoe around each other, uncertain about their impending marriage.
“The Drama” made for an enjoyable moviegoing experience, though the secondhand embarrassment I felt for Charlie was strong enough to make me physically cringe at times. The film’s premise (Emma’s secret) was a bold move on Borgli’s part, so I’d suggest watching it with your friends or fellow movie snobs. I gave it four out of five stars in my Letterboxd review.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a perfect first-date film — if you’re not looking for a second one.
