WHAT'S THE WORST THING YOU'VE EVER DONE?: a review of "The Drama"

 

"THE DRAMA"
Written and Directed by Kristoffer Borgli
***1/2 (three and a half stars)
RATED R
RUNNING TIME: 1 hr 45 min

I sometimes wonder if filmmakers ever realize if or when their film has become more provocative than they may have originally intended.

Within the last year or so, Writer/Director Kristoffer Borgli appeared upon my personal cinematic radar vis his third feature film, "Dream Scenario" (2023), starring a very strong Nicholas Cage as a mild mannered Professor of Evolutionary Biology who inexplicably begins appearing within the dreams of his family, students and ultimately the world to increasingly nightmarish degrees thus causing his real life to fully unravel. It was a funny, surprisingly sad and deeply engaging film by turns surreal in a certain Charlie Kaufman-esque fashion merged with a sharp cultural commentary that took its aims towards the public town square of cancel culture and the shunning of public figures based upon feelings and perceptions rather than actual facts and evidence. It was more than good enough for me to try and keep a certain attention over whatever he attempt next.

And now that his next film has arrived, he more than delivered the goods.   

With Kristoffer Borgli's tantalizing, and at times infuriating, "The Drama," it truly feels more than fitting for it to be existing within a period during which I have been seeing films that have focused their attention upon aspects of the human condition regardless of genre. To that end, to see one film after another--from Olivia Wilde's "The Invite" to Curry Barker's "Obsession"--concerned with exploring the messy, difficult and even tumultuous terrain of interpersonal relationships in fashions designed to inspire discussions as well as copious self-examinations has been superbly refreshing to experience during a period when those films are especially lacking in our movie theater going culture. Alongside those two aforementioned films, Borgli's "The Drama" sits comfortably as it is also a deeply--and rightfully--uncomfortable film that subverts the standard romantic comedy by deftly understanding human frailties and failings and importantly, how we navigate those same frailties and failures when trying to commit your life to another's.

Kristoffer Borgli's "The Drama" stars Robert Pattison as Charlie Thompson, the head curator of the Cambridge Art Museum who is intrigued at first sight by literary editor Emma Harwood (Zendaya), sitting alone reading a book in a cafe. After an awkward "meet-cute," Charlie and Emma begin to date and two years into their courtship, they become engaged to be married.

With one week remaining before their wedding, and during a long, and increasingly drunken evening food and wine tasting with best friends, married couple and Best Man and Maid Of Honor, respectively, Mike (Mamoudou Athie) and Rachel (Alana Haim), the quartet begins to individually confess to the worst thing they have ever done. After Mike, Rachel and Charles each share their stories, it's Emma's turn. While initially reluctant and evasive, Emma eventually relays her tale which upends everyone and just might threaten to end the marriage before it ever happens. 

Utilizing the structure of a screwball romantic comedy but filtering it through the lens of a psychological thriller, Kristoffer Borgli's "The Drama" is consistently unsettling as it constantly keeps us off balance through a electric presentation that is as magnetic as it is harrowing.

As a full surprise to me, Robert Pattison was terrific in the leading role! I express this sentiment with the full disclosure that I have never truly given him a fair chance solely based upon his work, such as it was, within the entire "Twilight" film series (2008-2012), a pentalogy I initially and openly conceded that I was not the intended audience but over the course, fully rejected as I felt them to be very bad movies. 

In addition to his work which I have seen in two Christopher Nolan's films, "Tenet" (2020) and this year's "The Odyssey," respectively, I am now seeing his true gifts and within "The Drama," Pattison has delivered a performance that could have simply existed within the realm of what Hugh Grant accomplished during his string of romantic comedies as Pattison is all clipped British stammers and gorgeous floppy hair. But, Pattison fully subverts all Hugh Grant comparisons by eliciting a performance that descends into full unhinged panic and increased dilapidation as he feverishly wrestles between his love for Emma and this new information from her past which he cannot reconcile himself with.

Charlie's quandary reminds me very much of the intensely painful romantic dynamics created within Kevin Smith's "Chasing Amy" (1997), as Ben Affleck's character, in a full romantic relationship with Joey Lauren Adams' self identifying lesbian, is completely undone by discoveries of her sexual past...which has no real bearing upon their present union. Kristoffer Borgli's "The Drama" explores and extends this conceit with equal parts humor and squirm inducing uncomfortableness as we in the audience are also forced to ask of ourselves not only what is the worst thing that we have ever done but how long should we be judged for such actions should they be revealed?

I am reminded of a lyric composed by Prince for the song entitled "Electric Chair," which poses the following:

"If a man is considered guilty
For what goes on in his mind, 
Then, give me the electric chair 
For all my future crimes..."

This is indeed the crux of Borgli's film. Are past transgression-whether committed or not--ever ones that can be given, can there be atonement...ad even further, precisely who deserves to be forgiven? Even further, what were the means, the incidents or the traumas that inspired said transgressions in the first place? This aspect of "The Drama" reminded me very much of Author Jay Asher's intensely haunting novel Thirteen Reasons Why (2007), which explored the suicide and backstory of a high school Sophomore, for if we all just took moments or even seconds to think before acting, what consequences could be averted?  

Even with this already insightful material, here is the exact point where I question if Kristoffer Borgli inadvertently delivered something even more daring and worthy of debate than he even planned for and that is because of the following question that I had as I watched the film: 

Does this film know that Emma is Black?

Certainly, anyone with two eyes watching the film and the characters existing within the film can see that Emma is Black as she is indeed being portrayed by Zendaya. Yet, aside from one admittedly sharp moment between the married couple of Mike (a Black man) and Rachel (a White woman), a moment that exposes Rachel's own seriously unacknowledged blind spots due to her own performative liberalism and microaggressions, the concept of race is never mentioned within the film. I do not say this as a detriment to the film overall but as an observation. Truthfully, within the framework of the  approximated reality in the film, it is extremely realistic to me, as a Black man who largely moves within White spaces, to view this collective of characters never mention or even think to approach racial dynamics due to their varying levels of White discomfort...which is always centered at the expense of Black realities, including Black injustice and pain. 

Imagine if say, Florence Pugh portrayed this particular role? Knowing her skill, she would have been amazing and the film itself would have remained as strong as it already is. But, we do have Zendaya in this role, and because she is the one inhabiting Emma, there are richer, deeper layers at work, making "The Drama" rub shoulders with the likes of Cord Jefferson's "American Fiction" (2023), as I felt Borgli's film captured and expressed the intense loneliness that exists with being a Back face in a predominantly White world, a loneliness that sits at the core of not being as seen, as empathized with, as understood, and definitely not as forgiven as one's White counterparts. 

As with "Dream Scenario," Kristoffer Borgli's "The Drama" again tackles the aspect of the comments section culture extending itself into the real world but this time starring al most exclusively White characters standing in judgement over Emma's past. Borgli also stages the film entirely from Charlie's perspective, save for key flashback sequences depicting Emma's adolescence and the stages of her story. It would be more than fascinating, and undeniably powerful, to see this exact same film but from  Emma's entire perception, perhaps something more akin to the multi-perspective structure of Akira Kurosawa's "Rashomon" (1950). 

Even so, what exists, at least for me, was an exploration of the racial-social dilemma that pits what I like to refer to as "the perceived inherent goodness of White people" vs. "the perceived inherent evil of Black people," as Charlie and Rachel's horrific past acts are completely waved away--as well as Mike's due to his proximity to Whiteness through his marriage to Rachel--and yet, Emma's past is under such intense scrutiny that she is either firmly questioned of her humanity or dismissed altogether, regardless of her life ever since. 

There is such power just aching to be unearthed within "The Drama," and while I do not believe that it was necessarily afraid of it sown material, as some films can be, I again question if Kristoffer Borgli really grasped the entirety of what he had. All of that being said, "The Drama" is jarring, disturbing, and enormously engaging as it poses the dark corner questions of those closest to ourselves: 

Who are you? And by loving you, then who am I?