After never starring alongside each other in a film before, Zendaya and Robert Pattinson are suddenly in three movies together this year.
The Odyssey and Dune: Part 3 sit further down the line, so this week’s The Drama is the first to hit cinemas.
Described as “a relationship comedy that dares to ask how much we really want to know about the people closest to us”, this subversive new wedding movie from director Kristoffer Borgli sees a young couple run into a world of trouble just days before they’re set to tie the knot. “There’s some drama…” Charlie, Pattinson’s character, tells a colleague at one point in the film – he couldn’t be more on the money.
’The only thing that could save me was a second first impression’
We meet Charlie as he struggles to write his wedding speech, flashing back to his first memory of Zendaya’s Emma, where what ought to have been a cheesy coffee shop meet-cute swiftly descended into bumbling, awkward comedy. Their relationship proceeds in this rather off-kilter fashion that teeters on the edge of kooky rom-com territory at times, but the direction that Borgli takes his capital D Drama speaks to an intelligent desire to unpick these tropes rather than simply take them on-board.
This isn’t a cut and dry romance – that much is made crystal clear in the film’s pivotal scene, which comes early in its 110-minute runtime. After a long, boozy night of taste testing the menu, the happy couple sit down with the best man and Emma’s maid of honour to play a game of “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?”, with sobering results. It’s a fantastically played extended scene that nails the way that conversation casually progresses into the crux of the narrative, rather than just kicking off with the question at hand. Once everything’s on the table, it’s then up to the everyone to decide where things stand in light of unexpected revelations.
Though it’s billed as a comedic analysis of Emma and Charlie’s relationship and the strain that this new discovery puts onto it, the film really revolves around Charlie, who comes out of it as the clear protagonist. He’s an anxious man at the best of times, with Pattinson seemingly playing his natural English accent up to eleven to make him even more of a fish out of water among a cast of Americans, but that goes double when the tension ratchets up. There’s a frantic energy to him, darting between possibilities, hopes and dreams and potential ways that the conversation he’s currently having might play out (good and bad).
This is often well-mirrored by the film’s score and editing, the latter more than matching the speed of Pattinson’s delivery, flipping between different scenes and moods in a way that could have been confusing but rarely, if ever, did. I’ve always liked Pattinson as a screen presence – he and Kristen Stewart together managed to make my recent first dive into Twilight the slightest bit salvageable – but as the central star here, he’s the film’s best asset.
Alana Haim features in a small yet crucial role and (as she did in One Battle After Another, where she had even screen-time) has me longing to see her given another hefty role akin to her mainstream debut in Licorice Pizza. Surprisingly, however, it’s Zendaya who feels most underserved by the narrative here. The marketing behind this movie made it look like a true two-hander between its main stars, but given the emergence of Charlie as the film’s full protagonist, we spend long stretches of the story feeling almost as closed off from Emma as he does.
‘I love the person that I thought she was’ confesses Charlie at one point, which manages to inadvertently summarise Emma’s arc through the film. It’s almost stylistic in the sense that it seems enamoured with Emma up until the point where all is revealed (and you’ll have to discover that revelation for yourself) before sidelining her and growing more and more inward and Charlie-focused as things progress – an interesting angle if that was the intention, but one that made the central issue feel less engaging as I didn’t feel she really had much of a dog in the race of preserving what the pair had previously built together.
Again, Zendaya does well with whatever the film throws her way – being such a charming character in the modern celebrity ecosystem, sometimes I feel as though she’s asked to play herself, but I saw more sides to her here – but I just didn’t have as much of a sense of Emma as a person rather than an idea or a narrative problem for Charlie to solve.
I must admit, I didn’t find much laughter beyond polite tittering for good portions of The Drama, especially in the sections where I felt the least engaged with the ongoing issue at hand. That goes to show how crucial it is that you get the balance right between your narrative and your humour when making a comedy. As things progressed, though, I was delighted to see things build to a properly engaging climax where everything gets dialled up a notch – from there, I was absolutely laughing along with everyone else. This was one of the most crowd-pleasing comedies I’d seen in a good amount of time and one or two moments had people literally gasping out loud in a way that you wouldn’t really expect from a film like this.
These final scenes also, crucially, shine a better light on Emma’s character, which allows its two capable stars to catch the bouquet together and steer the ship home towards a satisfying conclusion that landed well.
BBFC: Rated 15 for very strong language, strong sex, bloody images, drug misuse.
The Drama is in cinemas now.
