‘The Drama’ review: Relationship film has a crusty exterior and a tender heart
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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...