Robert Pattinson has often been better served by directors who aren’t strictly Hollywood. David Cronenberg, Claire Denis and Bong Joon-ho are among the filmmakers who have known how to channel the British actor’s nervous energy and talent for unpredictability. In Norwegian director Kristoffer Borgli’s rivetting film The Drama, Pattinson is in safe hands and in outstanding form.
Pattinson plays Charlie, a museum curator in Boston whose upcoming wedding to bookstore employee Emma (Zendaya) is teetering on ruin. During an ill-advised, alcohol-laced session of secret sharing with Charlie’s friends Mike (Mamoudou Athie) and Rachel (Alana Haim), Emma makes a shocking revelation.
With mere days to go to the wedding, every ritual associated with the nuptials – a photo session, speech-writing – is haunted by Emma’s disturbing confession. Charlie recoils from the possibility that he doesn’t actually know the woman of his dreams.
A nightmare that involves a blood-stained ear in the grass suggests David Lynch’s Surrealist world. Kristoffer Borgli’s screenplay has stronger lashings of absurdist Scandinavian comedies – Thomas Vinterberg’s Festen (1998) among them – in which family gatherings bring out the worst in their participants.
The Drama has also been filmed in the Dogme aesthetic that produced Festen, with a firm focus on the writing and performances rather than technical prowess. Cinematographer Arseni Khachaturan is forever closing in on faces and bodies, capturing them in natural light that neither flatters nor deceives. The editing, by Borgli and Joshua Raymond Lee, mirrors the nerve-wracked, unsteady journeys of its leads.
Having brought Emma and Charlie to the edge, The Drama hangs there for much of its 105-minute runtime. Emma’s secret, while terrible in scope, soon becomes unimportant in of itself, an excuse to get Zendaya and Robert Pattinson to convert their fabulous chemistry into spectacular bickering.
The camera-friendly leads are perfectly matched in sickness and health, their escalating mistrust only the latest reminder that honesty in relationships is overrated when the context is unclear. While Zendaya shines as the recently mysterious Emma, Robert Pattinson owns their scenes together and with the other characters whom Charlie turns to for advice or comfort.
Licorice Pizza star Alana Haim is terrific as the outraged Rachel. The movie has a bunch of superb cameos, with even minor characters pulling their weight.
Kristoffer Borgli’s anti-romcom rattles the cage but doesn’t shatter it, leaving us with hilariously off-kilter moments and lovely scenes of a couple dragging themselves to the wedding aisle, not quite sure of anything anymore. The crusty exterior conceals an endearingly tender heart.
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