Why are you acting like you've never done anything bad?
Take two photogenic young film stars. Cast them as affluent and charming professionals in love and about to get married. Make the best man and maid of honour their respective bffs - smart and witty for purposes of whipsmart repartee - and throw in a generous handful of scene-stealing support characters, plus a bunch of cool needle drops. Warm it all with an elusive and sexy marketing campaign, and serve up what feels like a classic romcom... for around the first fifteen minutes. Then lob in a metaphorical hand grenade that could scarcely cause more damage were it literal, plunging your genial genre pic into a very twenty-first century kind of turmoil. I give you The Drama.Zendaya and Robert Pattinson play loved-up Emma and Charlie, their journey to the altar truly idyllic prior to an ill-advised game of 'What's the worst thing you've ever done?' For three of the group, the response is of the 'No you didn't...' variety, cue uproarious laughter. Emma's drunken confession, however, leaves her friends stunned and her fiancé reeling. It's a reveal that's teased in the trailer but wisely not spoiled. Suffice to say the bride-to-be's disclosure sends her intended into a psychological spiral, while threatening to derail the wedding. It certainly sends the film's romcom sensibilities careering off the tracks into territory that will test its audience's appetite for dark, potentially triggering comedy.
The fact that The Drama is distributed by independent film company A24 should be the first indication that it's going to subvert - make that incinerate - genre rules. Its set-up has the regulation tropes, albeit with hints of something more off-kilter at work - the film's muted colours, its protagonists' slightly sketchy meet-cute, an uncomfortable discovery regarding the wedding DJ... But none of that prepares for Emma's bombshell. The result is an excruciating wallow in second-hand embarrassment and a grimly funny (depending on personal sense of humour) exploration of how much one person can truly know another. The film's provocative subject-matter is grounded by its comely leads, whose chemistry is effortlessly established pre-crisis. Pattinson's deeply human response is the fulcrum on which the 'drama' pivots and is also bloody hilarious (although I'm not sure everyone in my screening shared that opinion), his emotional nose-dive made funnier by Charlie's Brit-out-of-water status. Zendaya provides Emma with necessary empathy, although the story remains sufficiently detached from her to make us doubt along with Charlie what's going on beneath her surface. Alana Haim (Licorice Pizza) is good value as Rachel, Emma's deliciously spiteful maid of honour, and there are great supporting turns, not least from Zoe Winters as an obliviously cheery wedding photographer. The movie's spikiness is intensified in the edit - sharp as a sushi knife and switching to sometimes disorienting effect between past and present, the real and the imagined. And there's a subtly unsettling quality to the score, one particular recurring motif really putting the audience on edge. It all creates something uniquely uncomfortable, as tension mounts towards a fraught climax. Writer/director Kristoffer Borgli brings acute observation to The Drama's relationship portrait while posing thorny questions that go way beyond Emma and Charlie's personal calamity. His film is edgy, satirical, and thematically daring, and will disturb many - understandably so - even while entertaining others. If you like movies that stirs up heated discussion by going where mainstream entertainment fears to tread, however, this one is not to be missed. Memorable Moment: Emma and Charlie's warm-up photoshoot.
Ed's Verdict: 8/10. It made me laugh, it made me cringe, it made me think. Troubling and compelling, even while it made me choke with laughter, this is one that's going to stick with me all year.
