By Louis Kruger
Kristoffer Borgli’s The Drama is really funny. Important, because it’s laughter that propels us through the often uncomfortable self-implosion of two people’s lives. Mark this about The Drama: it’s incredibly engaging, and, with the Roadhouse Cinema just settling in Stellenbosch, it’s a film that will keep the audiences flowing, sending them out with a good time under their belts. The cinema is back!
The Drama follows two casually beautiful people, Charlie Thompson (Robert Pattinson) and Emma Harwood (Zendaya), in the weeks leading up to their wedding. They sample menus, practice their dancing (Emma doesn’t see the point), pick out flowers, meet with the photographer, lounge around in their gorgeous, eclectic, too-good-to-be-true apartment, and discuss the wedding DJ, who is probably a heroin addict (the certainty of this is debated by the protagonists). This last fact is one, but not the first, sign that something is the fault with our stars.
The film opens with Charlie planning his wedding speech with best man Mike (Mamoudou Athie), who is a sedate, collected presence in a frenetic film. As Charlie reflects on their relationship so far, we’re treated to a wickedly funny first encounter in a café: she’s reading a book (dramatically titled The Damage); he wants to talk to her, so he pretends he’s read it – classic.
It could be straight from a rom-com, were it not for slight abrasions we cannot help noticing. Charlie greets her loudly, profusely, to no avail – is she ignoring him? – lasting just long enough to become weird before she explains she’s deaf in one ear. When she suggests they “try this again”, he actually sits back down, sips his coffee, and acts like nothing ever happened – strange, but he’s just nervous, right?
On their date, she calls him a “little freak” a bit too emphatically after finding out he only pretended to have read the book – another brief moment of discomfort, quickly smoothed over with laughter (the wheezing, even “repulsive” laugh Charlie wants to memorialise in his speech).
The Drama, starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson, shows what happens when wedding planning goes wrong – really wrong. Currently showing at the Road House Cinema. Photo by Emma Giles.
It is this witty dalliance with the social void, uncomfortable silence, “Should I not have said that?”, which is part of the film’s success. And when it drops its figurative f-bomb, we’re left stunned. The audience, however, regains its footing far quicker than Charlie (her fiancé, who really loves her!), and soon is more absorbed in Charlie’s self-destructive antics than in Emma’s “drama”. This is, despite the efforts of her best friend, Rachel (Alana Haim), who won’t let it go.
From here on out, the film races down in a sharply controlled spiral. The editing, done partly by Borgli, bears mentioning: it’s daringly sharp, often cutting right on words, playing with the contrast of loud sound and total silence (Emma’s half-deafness is a prominent feature of the soundscape), and importantly, moves seamlessly between present and past.
We have other kinds of disruption: cinematographer Arseni Khachaturan mixes it up with handheld shots in tense moments, slow zooms that portend doom, and a disconcerting fast push-in as Charlie and Emma “seal the deal” at their wedding. The film is tightly packed, but in a way that’s not always straightforward, like one of Picasso’s faces. This may distance the viewer, or draw them into its unfolding hellscape, depending on your sensibilities. Some of it, like Zendaya’s ear pouring with blood in a restaurant, is a bit much.
The subject of race has been a prominent feature of critical discussion. To many viewers, it’s both painfully apparent and practically invisible. As New York Times critic Manohla Dargis says, “It is finally an old-fashioned story about a guy, who happens to be white, consumed by his fear of a beautiful, intelligent woman who happens to be Black.” Zendaya’s character is somewhat pinned in a script consisting of a timid array of nods, sobbing, and projectile vomiting, a step down from her strong performance in Challengers. Readings that are sensitive to racial politics are possible, but require some imagination.
There’s a brilliant scene where Charlie reaches into his drawer at work to pull out a book we know is there (I won’t spoil its contents). For a moment, it is suspended in darkness; one is overcome with the sense that Charlie unconscious, his darkest fears and desires, lie just behind that veil. It’s an almost perfect moment, subtly locating the surreal and otherworldly in solid reality. That is The Drama at its best: a vision of the deep dark hole which we do our best to cover over, but threatens to swallow us up at any moment; the secrets of others; the eminent fragility of our lives.
