The Drama Has a Big Reveal—and a Strangely Anodyne Effect

To make sense of the film starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson, a few spoilers are necessary.

Films don’t come much more self-consciously provocative than Norwegian writer-director Kristoffer Borgli’s The Drama. It’s a cautionary tale about the power of gossip, designed to pique the curiosity of a social mediasphere in thrall to its gorgeous A-list stars. The sheer wattage on display is a bit blinding; putting Robert Pattinson and Zendaya together as upwardly mobile, slightly hipster-coded lovers against a New York City backdrop is inspired bordering on diabolical. When museum director Charlie (Pattinson) chats up bookstore clerk Emma (Zendaya) in a coffee shop—he has to try it a couple of times because she’s deaf in the ear that isn’t crammed up by headphones— it’s the most nuclear-powered meet-cute in recent memory.

Charlie’s a stammering Hugh Grant manqué who knows he’s landed a baddie; Emma’s slightly aggro tendencies belie a tender heart. Or do they? While on a mission to finalize the wedding menu, Emma’s maid of honor Rachel (Alana Haim) and her husband/Charlie’s best man, Mike (Mamadou Ethie), propose a risqué bonding exercise; they suggest that each member of the quartet reveal the worst thing they’ve ever done. Tipsy on her second class of caterer-subsidized wine, Emma blurts out something so mortifying that you can almost hear the needle scratching against the vinyl of reality. Not only does Emma’s story bring the lunch to a halt, it leaves Charlie—previously seen composing his potential groom’s speech as an encomium to his future wife’s kindness, grace, and sexual athleticism—with the coldest feet in Manhattan. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he grumbles as he leads the staggering, semiconscious Emma up the spiral staircase of their apartment. To sleep, and perchance to dream of anything except his bedmate’s remembrance of things past.

As it’s impossible to discuss The Drama without referring to Emma and Charlie’s own discussion, it’s better to just deal with the Elephant in the room. When Emma was 15, she explains, she planned and armed herself for a school shooting, going so far as to record an explanatory video on her laptop. The only reason she didn’t go through with it in the end was that some other local kid opened fire in a shopping mall first, putting the community on high alert and, it’s implied, stealing her thunder; the deafness in her ear was a result of target practice gone awry.

Borgli, whose previous features Sick of Myself and Dream Scenario were both made in a spirit of sadistic one-upmanship, knows........

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