The past returns to distort a relationship in this dark romantic comedy.
The Drama | dir. Kristoffer Borgli | Reviewed by Devarya Singhania
Maybe you should ask everything on the first date if you’re planning on marrying the person. Or just don’t decide whether you’re going to marry them based on a couple of dates. Kristoffer Borgli’s The Drama is a dark romantic comedy about the days leading up to Emma (Zendaya) and Charlie’s (Robert Pattinson) marriage, and the one revelation that seems to upset everything.
I was pretty skeptical after the trailer. The amount of pressure it seemed to put on this one conflict (after which the movie is titled) felt quite risky. Often such decisions are only met with a half-hearted, mediocre climax. Not this time.
The movie begins with Charlie meeting Emma at a café. He pretends to know about the book she’s reading after a secret Google search, and they hit it off. This is when it’s revealed that Emma is deaf in one ear (foreshadowing the ‘big’ reveal later). The movie transitions into more montages of their first few dates, her ‘quirks’ that he finds adorable (most notably, her laugh) and within a few minutes the viewer is oriented into the fact that the movie is set just days before their marriage. This exposition happens through the form of Charlie planning his wedding speech with Mike (Mamoudou Athie), his best man. The movie then proceeds to show more shots of wedding planning from Emma and Charlie. They even spot their DJ doing heroin on the street–or so they think.
As Emma and Charlie are finalising the wines for their wedding, Mike and his wife, Rachel (Alana Haim) decide to reveal the ‘worst thing’ they’ve all done.
So far, the viewer knows that Emma and Charlie are quite a wholesome couple. Nothing unexpected about a happily engaged couple, as the synopsis indicates. They make fun of each other, have sex regularly (which Charlie feels like mentioning in his speech) and even just enjoy doing plain, boring activities with each other.
This discussion over wine comes twenty-five or so minutes into the movie. I know from the trailer that this is the moment when everything will be thrown into jeopardy, but I still didn’t expect the reveal this early. As they begin, Mike says he hid behind his ex when a dog attacked them in Mexico, Charlie cyberbullied someone long back, Rachel locked a kid in the closet as a teen, and Emma did something so deplorable that Rachel, for the entire movie, labels her a ‘psychopath.’
What’s interesting is, Emma planned to do the thing–she didn’t actually do it. She was in high-school when she planned it. Is the intent still as bad? When asked why she didn’t go through with the thing, she said that someone got to it first, and it made her re-evaluate the whole idea.
I won’t reveal what it is, because otherwise you won’t watch the movie, but Emma’s ‘incident’ raises quite a few questions in the viewers’ head–morally, logically and even to some degree, emotionally. Can you love someone with such a past, even if they claim not to be that person anymore? Or as Misha (Hailey Gates) says, wouldn’t extreme manipulation be exactly what a ‘psychopath’ would do?
In my opinion, the thing Emma planned to do, irrespective of whether or not she went through with it, was horrific. She said she was flattered by the aesthetics of it all. She recorded videos answering the “why would she do this?” question several times. She even shadow-enacted the whole scene at her home.
All the three characters shared my response. Rachel, like I’ve established, called her a ‘psychopath’ and blackmailed her throughout the movie. Especially on the day of her wedding. Mike tried to comfort Charlie. And Charlie spiralled into a breakdown which formed the crux of the movie going forward.
Charlie’s ‘breakdown’ is shown through animal imagery and episodes of mental escapes. His mind randomly conjures images of Emma as a child, doing the things she said she ‘planned’ and also Emma in the adult body replicating it. And no matter how hard he tries to say he’s over it, or coping well, he is unable to look Emma in the eye. Literally.
What does it mean for their marriage? Will Emma be disbanded by the three?
What the movie does well here, for the most part, is not overcomplicate the dynamic of the two. In that, the movie is primarily now focused on Emma and Charlie, with most scenes only having them. Charlie’s psychosis is not confronted by him until the very end (that is, he doesn’t seek any help), by when it might be too late, and Emma is mostly without answers. Because who will she seek help from?
I liked the lack of answers that this dynamic caused. While yes, Emma’s ‘planned thing’ was horrible, the movie does nudge towards the horrible thing Rachel did too. Who locks a child in a closet? No one is nearly as upset with her about it. Emma was the only one who didn’t cause anyone harm–she almost did, but the other three definitely did. But the scale of harm Emma could’ve caused continues to haunt the three.
Where I felt this movie faltered was the ending. There were also several moments of muffled speech which made the dialogue incomprehensible (mainly when Charlie speaks), which I also felt made the ending more bland. The conflict was set up so well, but the movie resorted to a ‘happy ever after’ ending. Not in a clichéd way, but it is implied that all is forgiven. It took a horrible speech at the wedding from Charlie which got him punched, but Emma and Charlie were still together. I couldn’t buy into that. It only raised more questions. Why didn’t Emma seek therapy? Earlier or now? Why didn’t they postpone the wedding or even think about it? I know, given the timeframe these might seem like trivial questions, but Charlie is clearly having a rough time, and they both could afford therapy. The implication there was that Emma didn’t want to be reported to the authorities or placed in care.
That seemed convenient, more than a plot point, because I didn’t see a reason they couldn’t go that route. At least that way, no one would’ve been able to blackmail Emma or pressurise Charlie. Couples counselling?
It’s a wise idea to know everything about your partner before you marry. Or at least, the worst parts. Else, who knows what’s bubbling underneath?
Reviewed by Devarya Singhania