REEL | Zendaya and Robert Pattinson Avoid 'The Drama'

"I love how she turns my drama into comedy."

A24 / VVS Films

The Drama, Norwegian writer/director Kristoffer Borgli's sharp yet twisted relationship "drama"/comedy starring the powerhouse on-screen couple of Zendaya and Robert Pattinson as Emma and Charlie, superbly toys with our expectations of modern romance. After the former drunkenly reveals a deep, dark secret from her past, the latter slowly breaks down while rethinking their entire relationship history, only days before their wedding.

Everything that follows the early reveal leads down a cringe-inducing but hysterical path of nightmare relationship fuel. Both leads are fabulously earnest in their raw depiction of difficult emotional range. However, Pattinson's winding character arc while trying to keep the peace between his best man (Mamoudou Athie) and her maid of honour (Alana Haim), as he learns more about Emma's troubled youth long before she met him, is completely captivating.

Haim, as the hypocritical friend, is perfectly suited to her character's intolerant pettiness and performative outrage as she harshly judges Emma's shared vulnerability. Borgli's fearless subversion of contemporary romantic complications and a tightrope tonal balance propel the 100-minute film like a psychological thriller, with audiences dreading the next embarrassing incident caused by the bride's disclosure but unable to look away. Everyone, populated in the kitschy, vaguely New England setting, pops in during their interactions with the unhappy couple, including small but wonderful turns from Hailey Benton Gates and Zoë Winters as memorable wedding guests.

The Drama's unexpected but (sur)real comedy about an otherwise sweet romance, heightened to its most ridiculous (slightly controversial) lengths through some serious drama, mines so much laugh-out-loud, dark humour about the mutual attraction. Zendaya and Pattinson are firmly authentic in the provocative romantic comedy about radical empathy and acceptance under the extreme circumstances of impending nuptials.


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