Early on in “The Drama,” Charlie (Robert Pattinson) and Emma (Zendaya) are practicing for the first dance at their wedding. They’re doing one of those old-timey, heavily choreographed routines. You know the type – the kind where you’re too busy thinking about the next step to worry about the fact that everyone is watching you during what’s meant to be an intimate moment. Charlie and Emma giggle their way through it, doing fairly well – but not well enough for their “Full Metal Jacket”-esque dance instructor.
They’re good, she says, but still have a lot of room for improvement. It’s here where Emma breaks, wondering out loud why they can’t just dance normally to a song they love. The whole thing just feels a little performative. Miss “Full Metal Jacket” shoots back with the unfortunate truth that all weddings are performative – less about the bride and groom than the hundreds of people they’ve invited to witness just how perfect and in love they are. And for Charlie, that performativity is kind of the point.
There are little nods to Charlie’s obsession with how others see him leading up to the first act reveal in Kristoffer Borgli’s black comedy, the reveal that forces Charlie, for the first time seemingly ever, to consider how he feels about something rather than how the world at large does. When a game of sharing secrets goes a little too far – recontextualizing everything Charlie thought he knew about his beautiful, perfect, kind fiancé – “The Drama” becomes a darkly funny, cringe-tastic and chaotic takedown of humankind’s obsession with the way we’re perceived.
Charlie has been dutifully, painstakingly crafting he and Emma’s perfect love story since day one. When he first sees her in a coffeeshop, he manufactures a meet-cute worthy of Nora Ephron. As Emma steps away from her seat, he sneakily snaps a photo of the book she’s reading and quickly looks up a few talking points on Goodreads. When he leans over to tell her how much he loved that book, she doesn’t react. He tries again, but it turns out Emma is deaf in that ear, and barely hears what he’s saying. His perfect moment ruined, Charlie begins to spiral, but Emma lets him off the hook – let’s start over, she says. We can control how this moment plays out.
Maybe Charlie and Emma can control their own story, but when Emma lets loose the darkest secret from her past during a wine tasting for their wedding – in front of their best couple friends, Rachel (Alana Haim) and Mike (Mamoudou Athie), no less – Charlie can’t control the fallout. Everyone at the table is dared to say the worst thing they’ve ever done (if we’re being honest, Rachel, played with detestable bitchiness by Haim, kind of forces the point). Rachel’s is the worst (she locked a special needs kid in a closet and left him there for hours), and Charlie’s is essentially non-existent (he says he cyberbullied a kid, but it kind of feels like he’s making it up just to have something to say). Emma’s, however, is interesting both because of what it is, and because, as much as she thought about it, she didn’t actually go through with it. Nonetheless, it turns the mood sour.
I would be remiss to spoil the surprise of Emma’s secret, but Borgli chose the one thing you might learn that your partner thought about – but, and I must stress this, didn’t actually do – that you wouldn’t be able to dismiss. It is shocking, and terrible, and I’m not surprised it took a non-American filmmaker to even consider broaching the subject. But, the film is less interested in Emma’s psychological state (beyond the fact that it has the utmost empathy for her) than it is Charlie’s reaction to the news – less interested in what this revelation says about Emma than what it says about Charlie, and how it changes what others think about his relationship.
From the moment he appears in “The Drama,” Charlie – and this is all a credit to Pattinson’s specificity as a performer – comes across as a faux-intellectual dingbat. He’s the type of guy who’s never had an original thought in his life, who squints with confusion and laughs off Emma’s suggestion that they should go to their favorite diner after the wedding because that’s not what people do on their wedding night. It’s interesting to think about how Charlie would have reacted had Emma shared this secret with only him. But, the reaction of his friends – in particular, Rachel’s snarling disdain – seals the deal.
I wouldn’t begrudge anyone for feeling angry about what Emma has admitted (quite the opposite). But Charlie seems to be more worried about the reactions of his friends. When trying to figure out if this revelation changes how he feels about Emma, he’s constantly looking for validation elsewhere. This is the first time he’s ever had to turn inward, the first time he’s ever had to really consider what human beings are capable of – and whether dark, violent thoughts matter more to him than action.
Emma is a tougher nut to crack. We are briefly in her head, often when she’s younger (played by Jordyn Curet) and going through a difficult time in her life, bullied by girls who will grow up to be just like Rachel. Emma is someone who is only just getting comfortable in her own skin – at one point, when Rachel marvels at the fact that Charlie is Emma’s first real boyfriend, Emma says she used to be ugly. That’s not really true, but it does offer some insight into Emma’s perception of herself. After becoming a little bit of a late bloomer (she is played by Zendaya, for crying out loud), she didn’t really date before Charlie. Is that because she’s worried about getting close to someone and having to tell them her secrets? Or, is it because she’s secretly crazy (this is Rachel’s theory), and Charlie – unsure of himself as he is – was an easy mark?
To the movie’s credit, it never really gives credence to the second part of that equation, at least not beyond Charlie’s own spiraling. Part of the inherent value in casting Zendaya is that she is immediately likable, and here, she’s far more vulnerable than recent memory. There’s a steeliness to some of her more famous roles, such as “Challengers” and even in “Euphoria” that falls away here, leaving someone who is heartbreakingly raw and remorseful over a dark period in her life. When Rachel gleefully tells her story about locking a kid in a closet for hours on end and not telling any adults where he was, Emma looks at her with a mix of disgust and fear. This revelation also makes Rachel’s reaction to Emma’s confession all the more performative – as horrible as Emma’s secret is, as close as she got to doing something truly unforgivable, she didn’t actually do it. Rachel did.
Borgli’s script tries to tackle a number of threads, leading to a movie that feels a bit like it’s throwing a bunch of ideas at the wall. Not all of those ideas stick, but the ones that do – namely, Charlie’s downward spiral towards something resembling a human being – are fascinating to watch unfold and think about later. As Charlie unravels, he begins to find his limits, to understand human capacity for bad deeds. Is it worse to think about doing something horrendous, but not follow through, or worse to do something relatively better, but hurt people in the process? Or, is it worse for the world to know about your misdeeds, both actualized and not? Charlie has to make that decision for himself, and he makes up his mind at arguably the worst moment possible – but, in doing so, finally thinks past the opinions of others. Somehow – almost jaw-droppingly so – ‘til death do us part might be possible for these two.
“The Drama” opens in theaters on April 3.
