The Drama (2026)

The Drama is a difficult film as it explores some truly complex questions, tackles how far our limits on understanding the humanity of people who do horrible things can go, and does it all while maintaining a darkly comedic approach to story telling. For me it worked, while fascinating me with the maelstrom of conflicting emotions and challenging me to face some difficult dilemmas in a way that was satisfying. But be warned, the film gets in your face and if there are sensitivities to certain issues it could be emotionally a very wrecking film. Even without certain vulnerabilities, the film purposefully makes you uncomfortable with what you are experiencing so it can put you in a situation to wrestle with some truly difficult questions about life and love.

Writer/Director Borgli's last film, Dream Scenario, didn't work for me, but with The Drama I feel he found the right mix. Because I think what is truly interesting here is not the specifics of the worst thing Zendaya's character has ever done, although it is easy to get lost a bit in that. In reality it is more about us coming face to face with out fears about how do we truly know the people we love in our lives and what about them might make us stop loving them. The film is set up cleverly in a way to directly ask us this moral quandary, but it also tells an interesting story with compelling characters while it is doing that. 

So much of this relies on how well Zendaya and Pattinson realize their roles. Both are cast somewhat against type and both create complex and rich performances that make these characters stand out. They also manage the difficulty of the script's dark humour layered into the dark drama. 

For me the film's weaknesses are found around them. While Borgli's screenplay draws the two central characters so well, it is often at the expense of any supporting cast who feel very one-dimensional. That mixed with the fact I struggle to buy Haim in almost any role I've ever seen her in, took me out of the film. I find her performances consistently hammy and didn't think she was up for this. But Athie is a great actor who just isn't given enough to do. Outside of the leads, the film doesn't offer them much support. 

(there are some *spoilerish* references in the rest of this review so stop reading now if you are spoiler averse)

But that wasn't fatal for me with this film as it focuses so much on those two. The film is about their relationship, aping the style of a rom-com, but going to very dark places with it. Even from the film's start you are presented with something you know is going to be different. It starts with a "meet cute" (which is explicitly labelled in the film as such) which feels off and somewhat creepy. To the film's final reconnecting after the couple splits (you know how they come running back to confess their love, usually involving running through some crowd to catch the other before they board the plane or something?) which here is handled just so deftly and lovingly. 

On the one hand, The Drama appears to be a far more romantic film than one might expect. It is saying, at its heart, that love can conquer all. Or is it? Is the ending, which reinforces the film's repeated references to starting fresh, perhaps childishly ignoring what is wrong, a cynical condemnation of this cinematic romantic ideal? You see, this is what I mean by the being so satisfying for me. It doesn't hold-my-hand (pun intended) and tell me what to think. It instead challenges me to grapple with questions that there may not be answers for. Maybe it's asking you to decide what you think. 

The film is getting a lot of flack for its choice of what terrible past Zendaya's character has and I understand why this could be quite upsetting. The film's central question needs it to be something truly terrible but also something human. The film does some meta talking to its audience (a lot of that actually) but in clever and integrated ways. At one point it asks us to consider how many of the other other people walking around us have also done what she's done with effectively disturbing effect. It also references something that could very well be worse (how you scale these horrors, I just don't know) at one point to make a meta point about the fact they didn't make her past even more depraved. My point is that the specific plot details might be too difficult for some audiences, especially since the film is asking us to laugh through some of this (more on that later). I understand why that might disqualify the film for people who have been directly effected by it. For me I was able to get over my discomfort with the use of such a vile back story as I understood why The Drama needed it.

I also feel like Borgli manages the humour very well. This isn't the sort of humour that bristles me, the kind that is used as release valve to take us out of a difficult situation, to take us out of our discomfort, to dismiss the seriousness of the story (see Paul Thomas Anderson films). This is the sort that doubles down on the discomfort. It is often there to highlight just how absurd we are and how difficult life can be. Often I was uncomfortable with how the film was making me laugh, because of how we are socialized to deal with humour in difficult situations. But The Drama recognizes how human laughter is as a means of processing. The humour here felt organic to the story and often truly honest.

But again I don't think that's what the film is about. It is a rom-com in a true sense. It is a comedy (although some of the blackest I've seen in a long time) and it is asking us question about romance and how we experience it, what are its limits, and what morally does it ask us to do. And that is what I haven't been able to stop thinking about The Drama since I saw it. That's why it will continue to wrestle with what it is asking. And that is why I will likely want to return to it again and again. 

The Drama

Starring: Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Mamoudou Athie, Alana Haim 

Writer/Director: Kristoffer Borgli