Kristoffer Borgli makes mind boggling pictures. His last film was Dream Scenario, the cancel culture feature that delivered a fantastic performance from Nicolas Cage.
His latest movie, THE DRAMA, lives up to its title in spades.
Zendaya and Robert Pattinson play a happily engaged couple who are under the pump when a revelation sends their wedding week preparations off the rails.
THE DRAMA can be seen on so many levels – as a cautionary tale about the whole wedding industry, the cost and pressures, the insane monetisation of the nuptial envelope, the faux fashion photography, the ridiculous excess of the reception. A commodity of errors.
It is also a deep dive into how well anyone can know another and whether sins of the past can ever truly be cleansed.
THE DRAMA starts out like a rom com, a meet cute set up with Pattinson’s Charlie hitting on Zendaya’s Emma. His chat up is based on a lie, pretending to have read the book she is reading and loving it. It’s a white lie that leads to a real romance and an apparently rock solid relationship.
In a drunken truth or dare night out with their best man and matron of honour, Zendaya confesses to a shocking truth that throws the relationship of all four into a spin out.
Here comes the first stone aspect of the film. Who is without shame or blame about things done in the past? Once again it’s judgement that defeats us. Moral judgement can make amnesiacs of us all. Taking the higher moral ground makes us forget our trespasses committed on the lower ground. Empathy becomes selective and base instinct prevails.
Is discerning the same as discrimination and is discretion the better form of valour?
THE DRAMA is a rom com put on its head, complications and conflicts compounding the interest multiplied by the square root of squirm. A great date movie!
