THE DRAMA

By Marc S. Sanders

A happy couple ends up not so happy when they get a little too honest with each other.  

After watching Kristoffer Borgli’s The Drama, I’m left unsure of what was supposed to be learned or what I’m supposed to take away from his picture.  Is he telling me that when you are on the cusp of walking down the aisle, if you see a red flag, you should hike it and run, or should you literally drop your betrothed’s pants and call do-over? 

After a cold open of meet cute cuts where the characters speak with one another and the film “stylistically” edits sudden breaks so that sentences of dialogue are interrupted for quick cut moments in time (I really don’t know why, because this routine got old really fast.), Borgli’s picture makes itself much clearer by showing that Emma and Charlie (Zendaya, Robert Pattinson) are the meet cute couple with successful careers, a million dollar New York apartment in the Village and a gorgeous wedding on the horizon.  

While at a wine tasting evening with the Matron of Honor and Best Man, Rachel and Mike (Alana Haim, Mamoudou Athie), a game is played where the four challenge one another to confess the worst act they have ever committed.  Emma is clearly the most reluctant to participate and thus the last one to go.  Comparatively speaking, Mike’s act is quite tame when measured against what Charlie and Rachel admit, especially Rachel.  The three laugh about it all though.  I found Charlie to be an asshole for giggling over what came of his actions.  I found Rachel to be a heartless fuck for dismissing her sick deed, as well.  These were not immature hang up crank calls.  When Emma admits to only planning her worst act but never following through, the dynamic shifts in the worst way imaginable.  

I will not spoil what she reveals.  What Emma planned when she was teenager is repulsive.  Yet, unforeseen circumstances stopped her from execution, and she explains that her life went in a completely opposite direction of nobility from that point on.  Nevertheless, Charlie cannot look past Emma’s confession, and he randomly grows startled by her while also envisioning his fiancée in unflattering scenarios inconsistent with the woman he thought he knew and loved.

Rachel is even less tolerable or accepting of Emma, and does not hide her bitterness (again) at only what was planned but never happened. Rachel’s mindset goes to a cousin who was a victim of a terrible incident that Emma has nothing to do with.  This allows one of several personal conflicts to remain at the top rather than just drift away.

The Drama runs out of road very fast.  The confessions around the table are interesting and left me curious as each person steps up to share. Afterwards though, when the evening is over, characters have sobered up, and simply because Borgli’s script contrives it to be, the anguish mires on and on and on.  

Borgli thematically uses alcohol consumption as a way to keep his characters repulsed with themselves and each other.  I guess he figures if these people are drunk they can vomit over and over with endless guilt and conflict.  If they sobered up they might start making sense, own up to their faults and move past this with no further judgement or resentment.  

Wouldn’t that be a lousy movie? 

Emma first explains and apologizes when the response does not go over favorably.  Later, she explains to Charlie how she turned her life around and did something positive with herself and the greater good.  Charlie seems to be deaf to what’s told to him.  (Ironically, it’s Emma who is deaf in one ear but remains much more attuned to what’s happening.). Moreover, he never considers relaying Emma’s explanations to Rachel, who really elevated this beyond reason.  If he had, then Borgli’s movie would have ended at the forty-five minute mark.  

With twenty minutes left in the movie, Charlie’s anguish cannot be contained. As the wedding day gets closer, he temporarily lets his guard down and loses a moment of commitment and clarity.  The math adds up to bloody and disastrous proportions at the wedding as toasts are drunkenly made by both Charlie and Rachel.  Poor Mike is delivering the cringe expressions that really belong in a bedroom farce and not in a movie called The Drama that reveals a lot of unwanted, meritless drama for the sake of earning movie ticket admission fees.

None of what you see in Kristoffer Borgli’s film is necessary.  It’s like an episode of Three’s Company.  If just one person would simply stop, think and clarify then all of this would be behind them.  Borgli doesn’t allow his characters to do the most obvious and sensible actions though.  He dumbs his characters down to persist the drama of The Drama.  

The end of the story lacks a payoff.  It’s never clear if all of the truth comes out or if any of these four characters see reason.  All that Borgli does is have Emma and Charlie reunite and try another reset method that they both attempted to do three separate times earlier in the movie.  Am I to believe that this time it’ll work because tears were shed and someone has a bloody nose?

I dunno!

Borgli seems to have painted his screenplay into a corner that he can’t escape.  So, he opts to go in a proverbial loop. If a band aid on a leaky pipe is not going to work the first time, why are you trying to put a new one on after that, and then another, and then another?