ROBERT PATTINSON AND ZENDAYA IN THE DRAMA

Too much information could ruin a wedding

Kristoffer Borgli's trendy wedding actioner is an almost-horror story with final reverse mock meet-cute. This was one of those films that was a shock to actually see after months of anticipating it favorably solely on the basis of the poster about it llt up in one of the serpentine hallways of in my local cineplex. Not what I thought at all, I want to say, not what I wanted at all. While it has some of the characteristics of a sort of drawing room comedy, and I kept thinking throughout that it was very much an "opened up" theatrical play, it's full of ugliness and has edges of sheer mess.

Is there any thread of satisfaction left after seeing it? Well, yes. more than a thread. It's still an A24 film that stars Robert Pattinson and Zendaya. Moreover, the sets around Boston and Andover feature, however improbably, the Turner Hill Mansion in Ipswich, MA, a 1903 Elizabethan-style estate featuring opulent, historic interiors, with hand-molded plaster ceilings, intricate wood-carved paneling, ornate stairways. It actually serves as a hired wedding venue in real life, but here, Pattinson and Zendaya are living in it, and their living room, with its very tall windows, could be part of an impossibly posh Manhattan townhouse. It's a set that implies Pattinson's character, a Boston museum director, might possess inherited wealth, which in the museum world is not unusual.

The Drama leaves a trail of dissatisfaction as well as the intentional unpleasantness and cringe-worthy, funny embarrassment. There are hints of a serious theme being misused, of one of America's greatest problems being no joke, and no material for horror stories or twisted romances or weddings-gone-wrong tales.

The editing style Borgli insists on is what alienates me at first, and throughout. Working with editor Joshua Raymond Lee (of the miniseries Ripley, which unlike many, I strongly disliked) , Borgli utilizes rapid cutting techniques—including smash cuts and jump cuts. The idea is to suggest immediate recall, and fractured points of view; to show a moment, then cut-in a shot of what happened just before—to punctuate moments of awkwardness, tension, and shock; and to cut-in what was feared might happen, or might have happened. To disorient us, which is, after all, quite unnecessary, because the front-and-center story is quite disorienting and disturbing enough.

The start is a meet-cute between the British museum curator, Charlie (Pattinson) who sees an attractive woman who turns out to be Emma (Zendaya, who beside being very complex and inward here is, of course, very attractive), a bookstore worker. She sits reading a book in a coffee shop. Charlie introduces himself by pretending to have read the book and loved it. The joke is at first she can't even hear the BS he's dealing out because she's deaf in one ear -- the one he's talking into.

The sense of tentativeness and fakery is amusing, but also the fakery itself feels fake. One feels that Robert Pattinson, as well as a real museum director, would be suaver than this. But the cliches of meet-cutes are layered with flusteredness All that matters really is that the two actors are attractive, and they are. Needless to say a series of fractured-edited montages follow of the couple dating, Charlie revealing he hasn't even read the book, not even in preparation for the first date, though he'd phone-snapped it for reference even before he first spoke to her and knows what it is.

But the central, and quite theatrical, i.e., play-like, scene involves two couples, Charlie and Emma, now about to get married (the vicious cutting certainly cuts to the chase), and Charlie's best friend Mike (Mamoudou Athie, a horror movie vet who yet oozes calm intelligence) and Rachel (Alana Haim of PTA's Licorice Pizza, surprisingly crude here, but effective). They decide to play a game. They're drinking. Emma may have drunk more than usual. They are to reveal the worst thing they ever did in their lives.

What Emma reveals is a shock to everybody, so much so that Rachel turns against Emma, and Charlie's commitment to the marriage is severely shaken. This scene propels us into the confusion and titular "drama" that follow. This scene turns what might have been a rom-com, or a romantic drama, with an edge of irony since it begins with Charlie's lie and Emma's disability, into what might be called "a tense moral thriller." Will they or won't they? What will Charlie choose? And what should he?

Charlie is a disappointingly weak figure as depicted, though some may like to see Robert Pattinson cry so much. It's still the intense performance by Zendaya that gains the most praise, and the loud, threatening manner of Alana Haim that contributes the greatest fear factor, while Mamoudou Athie as Mike provides the one solid base.

The question is How much can you forgive in a prospective spouse? One may also ask How much do you need to know about anybody? A complication is that the things the other three people did that were their "worst" were all quite bad, and even if Emma's was the worst of the four, it was an act she planned but never executed. Ironically, Rachel's act was horrible and cruel and she really did it. And even Mike's was cowardly in the extreme, and Charlie's unpleasant. Doesn't writer-director Borgli's vivid writing confuse the issue here? But he plainly wants more than anything to confuse us, so he has achieved his goal, however messy that is. And it's the name of the game these days to mix and confuse genres, and sometimes, as with Ryan Coogler's Sinners, the most far-fetched mixture works the best.

Pattinson looks adorably rumpled throughout, and Zendaya's beauty cuts like a knife. Whoops! Did I give something away?

The Drama, 106 mins., opened in many countries Apr. 1, 2026. Metacritic rating: 5̶9̶%̶ now 60%. AlloCiné rating (France) critics 3.4=68%, spectators 3.6=72%, now critics 3.3=66%, spectators 3.5=70%.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.