The Drama Review

Shock as Structure in Kristoffer Borgli's The Drama

By: Marc Kozak

The Drama

Shock as Structure in Kristoffer Borgli's The Drama

By: Marc Kozak

No matter how well you think you know your partner, there will always be parts of them that are inaccessible to you, probably forever. Every individual is a constantly changing ball of complexity, full of intimate feelings, thoughts and experiences that can’t easily be communicated. The reasons for self-censorship aren’t usually malicious; it’s hard enough to know everything about our own selves, much less tell it to someone else. But sometimes, people try to “hide the crazy” intentionally, choosing not to let even their closest loved ones in on certain aspects of their being out of fear that it would permanently change how they’re perceived.

Kristoffer Borgli’s The Drama takes this all-too-human fear and cranks it up to 11, using a spectacularly shocking early twist to transform what appears to be a sweet rom-com into a diabolical farce. I won’t give away the surprise here, but it’s sure to be a major talking point with the potential to dominate cultural conversation and enrage social media, surely music to the ears of A24 and the shit-stirring Borgli. The Norwegian director, whose stock was already on the rise thanks to provocative dramas like Sick of Myself (2022) and Dream Scenario (2023), takes square aim at a particularly touchy American issue and gleefully throws gasoline on the fire, weaponizing two of Hollywood’s biggest stars to create a delightfully fucked up and deliriously entertaining spectacle.

You can tell right away that this isn’t going to be an ordinary rom-com – even the meet-cute is kind of scuzzy. Charlie (Robert Pattinson) is instantly knocked out the second that he sees Emma (Zendaya) reading a book in a Boston coffee shop. He quickly Googles the book she’s reading in a terrible attempt to pretend he knows all about it, and then clumsily approaches her with the world’s worst game, saved only by the fact that she is deaf in one ear and couldn’t hear him. Pattinson is never better than in these opening scenes and is quickly becoming one of our best bumbling buffoons – just handsome and naturally charming enough to make up for the general unsophistication and even indifference of the characters he plays. In this case, his character seems just as surprised as we are that a woman like Emma would give him the time of day.

" This all adds up to movie destined to be a content-generating machine -- in a way, it all makes The Drama one of the most of-the-moment American movies possible. "

From there, the couple falls in love, moves into a lovely home together, and is only a week away from their wedding, checking items off the wedding to-do list with their maid of honor Rachel (the delightfully bitchy Alana Haim) and best man Mike (Mamoudou Athie). As the foursome starts to get tipsy at a food and wine tasting, they play an impromptu game of “what’s the worst thing you’ve ever done,” as each person feels just loose and buzzed enough to admit some pretty embarrassing things in front of the safety of their closest friends. Emma, who has been pounding wine since the game started, goes last and reluctantly reveals something that she did when she was fifteen, completely stunning the group and enraging Rachel, so much so that the night abruptly ends in chaos and tears, and even the status of the wedding is thrown into doubt.

This reveal happens about 20 minutes in, and its fallout lasts the rest of the 105-minute runtime. The entire success or failure of the movie hinges on the twist, and it’s such a twist that it’s more than enough to power us through everything that follows. Some may have trouble with the believability of such a thing, but I never questioned it for a moment – really, it’s hard to imagine any reveal like this one feeling too transgressive in 2026 America. The movie goes out of its way to make you believe it, heavily leaning on flashbacks that show a teenaged Emma struggling through a troubled childhood, doing its best to rationalize her behavior while still allowing us to feel some kind of empathy for her modern-day self. This is where the casting of Zendaya is revealed to be a brilliant move – we naturally like Zendaya the person and inherently root for her character. Even after the reveal, we still want to give her the benefit of the doubt. It’s why the movie had to choose her as the one with the nasty secret instead of Pattinson’s character, because we would’ve turned on him immediately, and well, that just isn’t as interesting.

The fact that Borgli chose to assign this secret to a black woman instead of a white man – who are exponentially more responsible for performing the real-life act that teenaged Emma once considered – is another bit of provocation, and one that might be a bridge too far for some viewers. There’s also the fact that Borgli is in the news for once writing an essay about an age-gap relationship he once had – Borgli was 27 and the girl was a 17-year-old high school student – all of which makes you wonder if Borgli is using the structure of the film to either show his own repentance (seems unlikely) or troll us over something he thinks everyone is overreacting to. This all adds up to movie destined to be a content-generating machine, with conflicting opinions, enflamed takes, and heated conversation built into its bedrock. In a way, it all makes The Drama one of the most of-the-moment American movies possible.

Borgli is clearly enjoying the cringe-inducing awkwardness of the numerous interactions that occur after the reveal, but what really keeps the movie moving is the feeling that, against all odds, he wants these characters to find redemption with each other. Even as Charlie starts to spiral out of control and eventually commits his own terrible deeds, we start to get the impression that these two deeply flawed people might actually be made for each other. And then it’s hard not to actually start rooting for them to make it through, even after it seems like their lives are destroyed after all of the truths finally come out during the wedding. It feels insane to say it, but the ending is actually very sweet – it’s really just a story about two people who match each other’s crazy and are able to find a connection despite their (very serious) flaws. Is it too much to say that it might be one of the more romantic endings in recent movie history?

It’s a bit of a shame that these interesting thematic bits will surely get buried amidst the other drama that makes better headlines when talking about the movie. Sure, Borgli has brought it on himself. But he’s also made a firecracker of a movie, full of interesting angles and firestarters that will get some spicy conversations going with your friends or loved ones on the way home from the theater. It truly is 2026 in movie form, which may sound too exhausting to be a ringing endorsement. It definitely gets the blood moving, which proves there’s still life in this medium yet.