2026 | rated R | starring Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Mamoudou Athie, Alana Haim | written & directed by Kristoffer Borgli | 1 hr 45 mins | 4 out of 5 stars |
Emma (Zendaya) and Charlie (Robert Pattinson) are in the final stretch before their wedding day when a late-night game leads to a confession by Emma that causes a rift in their friend group and sends Charlie questioning who he is about to marry.
In just 3 feature films, Norwegian writer/director Kristoffer Borgli has masterfully solidified a signature style that effortlessly mixes messy human relationship with sharp social satire. The Drama follows the cancel culture dramedy Dream Scenario and the internet famous satire Sick of Myself, delivering another entry in Borgli’s growing library of examinations of embarrassing modern behavior. It’s his weakest movie to date, but you can see it as part of a growing filmography.
Like Sick of Myself and Dream Scenario centers around obnoxious people overreacting obnoxiously. At a certain point in the movie that is repellant, until it becomes clear that is Borgli’s point. He’s relaying what it’s like to be around these people; how easily people are written off by mistakes, refuse to see people grow once they have made a mistake and put political or social ideology before their own friends and family. Without going into the details of Emma’s confession here, suffice to say it involves her plan to do a very bad thing, not going through with it and that thing is wrapped in a social hot-button issue. That thing then becomes the center of Charlie’s growing distrust for her that unravels his feelings. That thing then becomes the pseudo-quasi-debate the movie has with itself and its characters of varying opinions.
Alana Haim (Licorice Pizza) plays the film’s arch villain, a gossipy, reactionary, overly dramatic Id that can no longer see her friend for the politics in front of her. What makes this movie work so well for me is how it complicates the issue by dropping us into Emma’s headspace with childhood flashbacks. Quite frankly, a lot of that goes to Zendaya’s performance which creates a likable character out of someone another Hollywood movie would have blown off and stereotyped. Charlie is our second villain here, though he’s written and performed by Pattinson as a man struggling with the information he’s been given and desperately trying to see past it to the girl he fell in love with at a cafe. Pattinson plays the nervous geek here well. He’s showing some comedy chops in Charlie’s breakdown even if the movie doesn’t play it for laughs.
The backbone of The Drama is a wedding-gone-wrong comedy given the A24 treatment. So instead of the wacky disasters of a 2000’s comedy, it’s grounded in something more real and leans into awkward tension and cringe comedy instead of slapstick and gross-out gags. I love the way Borgli show’s Charlie’s increasing paranoia in hallucinations that blend right into the reality around him. Small bits like Charlie seeing people running for their life outside a window, or Emma bleeding from her deaf ear while sitting across from him in a restaurant. It gives the movie a surreal quality.
I also found myself just wanting more from it. More tension, more chaos, more, well, drama. And given how this spirals so far out of control, I’m not sure what that “more” would be. I wanted to be on pins and needles waiting for the other shoe to drop and that just didn’t happen. Not because the wedding doesn’t become a disaster in the worst possible ways, but because – I can only theorize – maybe Borgli hasn’t lined up all the fuses to go off in just the right order and create that tension. To prime that awkwardness more or to let us in on something the characters don’t know so we watch in horror as something is about to happen.
But overall, I enjoyed The Drama. It stuck with me for a few days afterward and it’s going to stand out among drier romantic dramas. Would I have wanted a more intelligent debate on the subject here? Sure, but I think Borgli letting the emotional journey tell the story keeps it from being to on-the-nose. And that’s for the best.