If it’s true that you can never really know a person—that between you and another, regardless of familiarity, there stands an impassable gulf no thought or action can traverse—then it stands to reason that even the one individual you have decided to spend the rest of your life with is, in essence, a stranger. And vice versa. The gap between you and them ideally ought to be smaller than the one between you and, say, your Uber driver, but all the same, what your shared intimacy affords is only a shrinking of the gap over time, and not its total closure.
Sure, good sex can momentarily erase any mindfulness of that distance, and I suppose that certain battle-tested relationships progressively learn to work their way around it, so that continual negotiation of its existence further unites the parties in deeper ways than would concerted efforts to abolish the divide outright. Love, here, resembles more an enduring act of mutual concession than it does domination in toto; the conscious preservation of your partner’s inscrutability—meaning, that irrevocable other-ness which is part and parcel of their singularity in the world—ought to make of such mystique a real opportunity for meaningful, long-term intrigue, rather than it be villainized as some willfully obscured portion of the beloved that one must first capture, and then neatly assimilate as a fully known category, in order to legitimately stake out the terms of intimate companionship.
The relationship at the heart of Norwegian filmmaker Kristoffer Borgli’s new English-language film The Drama stands, at the end, on a newfound brink of discovery: What Charlie and Emma know of each other right before the credits roll is a significant leap beyond what was known at the beginning. The terms of their partnership going forward is kept, wisely, a mystery. The “drama” of it all is that at the beginning, Charlie and Emma are happily in love, and days away from getting married, but an icebreaker the couple plays with two friends over dinner in which each person reveals to the group the “worst thing they’ve ever done” reveals a fact about Emma’s past self that disturbs everyone at the table, and foments in Charlie second thoughts over whether he really wants to be this woman’s husband—or, possibly, whether he wants to be with Emma at all.
The viewer may or may not underrate the severity of Emma’s confession. (I for one see it as obviously disturbing but ultimately, even somewhat “easily”, forgivable considering the special circumstances. My only spoiler-ish comment on the reveal is that Emma is being harangued for something she planned for, rather than something she ultimately did, and this is a subtle but important clarification regardless of how close she got to committing the deed, or the possibly flimsy rationale behind her eventual abstention. Others, however, may rationally disagree.) What matters narratively, however, is the judgment of Charlie and the couple’s mutual friends—and it is the sort of baffled aggrievement one would expect from their “types,” i.e. liberal American yuppie millennials with padded upbringings. Contrast these with Emma, whose own upbringing was defined more by precarity, displacement, and a closer proximity to violence/death.
This is not to say, of course, that the above dynamic is necessarily “baked-in” to this class-contrast, as responses to Emma’s “deed” will inevitably vary from person to person regardless of class, but Charlie and co.’s flabbergasted revulsion is certainly expected of those whose principles are safely abstracted away from the grimier elements of life/psychology that other, less well-off persons do not have the luxury of simply moralizing away.
Part of the compelling frisson of The Drama is this subtle societal dynamic—between Charlie (a British expat who works as a museum curator in the Boston area) and Emma, Emma and their friends/colleagues, etc.—that their conflict subtly exposes, in addition to the more salient inter-relational dynamic that Charlie and Emma must now newly navigate as a couple. Emma has also done much work to present herself as someone with the kind of privilege, and uncomplicated righteousness, that those in her environment possess, which further exacerbates the dissonance Charlie feels between the person he fell in love with and the stranger person her confession now seemingly describes.
The upcoming wedding elevates the dramatic tension, as neither of the two are keen on cancelling the ceremony due to the expected pressures of finances and social circles. An additional wrench in the works is Rachel (Alana Haim), one of the friends present at the dinner game and Emma’s maid of honor, who now despises Emma and is also a risk factor for the secret getting out, which will not only complicate the proceedings but may also serve as a medium-sized scandal, what with the ever-present potential for virality from even the most hermetic corners of society.
And through all that, Charlie is totally stunned into decision paralysis. Does he even know who Emma is, anymore? And if she was capable of that, in the past, what’s stopping that risk from coming up in the future? For better or worse, after a certain point The Drama becomes Charlie’s story, and the narrative hinges on how he will choose to act on this new information, as Emma, despite her own reasonable shames and fears, is still motivated to marry the man she loves.
This, needless to say, is a situation ripe for drama (and melodrama) but perhaps the most appealing aspect of Borgli’s work is its heavy leaning towards comedy. The Drama is a funny film, with a good number of wickedly silly verbal/auditory gags and ridiculous characters, as well as normal characters acting ridiculously in order to propel the plot to its cringe-inducing climax. (Fair warning to those, like me, who suffer from nigh-debilitating secondhand embarrassment.)
There are plenty of traditionally “dramatic” moments, especially when it comes to the inevitable couple-bickering between Charlie and Emma, but overall, Borgli, who also penned the screenplay, utilizes the inherent silliness of the premise to very entertaining effect. And while many films set in the contemporary era bludgeon the viewer over the head with its attempts to be “timely” or to treat too many hot-button topics at once, by hyper-focusing on the plight of the main characters he avoids these pitfalls, in addition to just having a good ear for how those in that specific milieu/age-range speak and behave and interact.
Robert Pattinson and Zendaya as Charlie and Emma, respectively, are quite good, though Pattinson’s experience definitely shines when partnered with his co-star in their many scenes together. His character work has always been surprisingly varied post-Twilight, but in The Drama, he plays a decidedly “normal” role (even retaining his English accent) and therefore must work harder to believably inhabit the nuanced differences; which he does in spades, excelling in the quieter interpersonal moments and showing comfortability with “bigger” scenes angled towards black comedy. As for Zendaya, her ability has always been hampered by an ineptness with roles that are “against type”—she sticks out like a sore thumb, for instance, in the sci-fi epic Dune films—or with those that require a more mature gravitas, but here, she is more or less convincing, and even displays a natural physicality perfectly amenable to comic acting, which is unsurprising given her start in a Disney Channel sitcom.
Another strength of The Drama is its editing style, courtesy of Borgli and Joshua Raymond Lee, which I have heard described as “European” in sensibility; which simply means that the editing is not very concerned with holding a viewer’s hand through staid chronological exposition and/or unadventurous perspective-taking. The film unabashedly jumps around time and place sans telegraphing, and even in one instance merges past and present elements in order to express a character struggle purely by visual means. It makes for a funny and, yes, slightly disquieting sight gag which is but one example of Borgli’s overall ethos: Charlie and Emma are a car crash waiting to happen, and you will sit and watch and laugh—awkwardly, if you must—until the collision occurs.
It is arguably this very ridiculousness that prevents The Drama from being the unfettered tour-de-force some of its more enthusiastic viewers rate it as being. If you are looking for a deep, mature work about romantic relationships (i.e. truly character-driven, rather than openly coerced by the concerns of plot and what critic Dan Schneider calls The Dumbest Possible Action trope) then The Drama is decidedly not that; but it is a provocative film in more ways than one, and will surely motivate many discussions coming out of the theater and beyond.
And along with its hilarity comes some subtlety: the opening scene of the film is Charlie and Emma’s meet-cute at an upscale coffee shop. Charlie notices her upon entering, and works up the courage to approach, even outright lying to her by saying he’s also read the book she’s reading. Unbeknownst to him, however, she is deaf in one ear, and his whole cold approach falls flat, as she’s listening to music in her other ear, and it is only through awkward fumbling on both their parts that understanding occurs, and their love story begins.
Their whole problem is a failure to communicate, whether by talking past each other or, when it matters most, not talking at all. It is also a subtle dig at Charlie, who benefits from Emma’s confession by its automatically lifting him onto a clear moral high ground, but from the jump he is shown to have issues with honesty himself, plus a childish refusal to deal with the consequences of his deception until they inevitably blow up in his face.
Like any good comedy, The Drama ends on a positive note, with a kind of tentatively hopeful re-enactment that acknowledges how much Charlie and Emma have yet to learn about each other, despite everything they already know. Whether or not the pair stay together beyond their final scene remains an open question, but it is acknowledgments like these that motivate genuine desire, helping close the flaw in oneself that inhibits another, beloved or otherwise, from becoming fully distinct, and imperfectly real.
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