Intrigues in cinema have become fragmented stories, pieces of a narrative supposed to come together at the end, like pieces of an irregular puzzle. You can zone out for a few minutes without missing anything too important.
Sometimes, it’s hard to grasp why a film exists. Maybe to capture the attention of viewers who allegedly pay almost as much attention to the small screens they hold in their hands as to the big cinema screens. The plots have become fragmented stories, pieces of a narrative supposed to come together at the end, like pieces of an irregular puzzle. You can zone out for a few minutes without missing anything too important. But in the end, you might wonder what the film left you with. I’m not talking about a conclusion or even a satisfying ending. In reality, all you need is a feeling, a sense that something has changed within you. It’s a simple but essential pleasure that filmmakers of the new generation are increasingly struggling to provide.
The latest example is The Drama, where Robert Pattinson and Zendaya play Emma and Charlie, a young couple in love. They are engaged and caught up in all the preparations that this event involves: meeting photographers, learning dance steps, writing small speeches to declare their love. Their closest friends, Rachel and Mike (Alana Haim and Mamoudou Athie), also a couple, accompany them at every step. In the first scene, we see how Emma and Charlie met charmingly in a cafe, but this first meeting is based on a deceit: Charlie spots Emma reading a book; discreetly takes a photo of the cover and quickly searches on his phone to gather some details about it. He then approaches Emma, enthusiastically telling her how much he loves that same book, even though he obviously has never read it. Emma ignores him at first—or so he thinks. But it turns out, as she explains when he finally manages to get her attention, that she is deaf in one ear (she wears an earpiece in the other). Then she smiles so radiantly, showing that she completely buys into his little lie, even though, as later revealed, he will never read that book. The couple lives in a comfortable apartment, shelves filled with books, the kind of decor rarely seen in today’s films and certainly not in real estate advertisements. This suggests that these are people who live with books and actually read them—or at least one of them, and we imagine it’s Emma.
Charlie’s initial deception is a trifle, isn’t it? In The Drama’s universe—which might be better described as a dark comedy rather than a black comedy—this may not be so inconsequential. Through flashback sequences, we see how Emma and Charlie’s bond strengthened over time spent together. We never know exactly what Emma does—affectionate, sweet, but somewhat pragmatic— in life, but it is implied that Charlie, charming and a bit clumsy, works at a prestigious museum. In the most romantic scene of the film, Charlie speaks softly but confidently into Emma’s deaf ear, to see if she could catch glimpses of what he is saying, or even just the essence of his words. “I love you so much it hurts,” he tells her. “I want to marry you, but I’m too afraid to ask.” She doesn’t hear him at all—he misinterprets his words into an absurd and silly sentence—but the sentiment is there. Everything should go wonderfully, as expected.
And yet, this is not the case. In the film’s major twist, around the one-third mark, we learn that Emma has a secret, a leftover from her difficult and unloved adolescence within a military family; she has had to move so often that she has never been able to settle anywhere. The pleasure that the audience is supposed to derive from The Drama lies in knowing nothing about this secret initially, although it is impossible to discuss the film’s meaning—or lack thereof—without revealing that this act is not something Emma actually did, but only something she contemplated. Once Emma reveals this secret, just the memory of it upsets her; she panics a bit, tormented by imaginary flashes of the person she used to be. Charlie, too, is unsettled and begins to doubt this woman he was previously madly in love with. Rachel, played by Haim, loses her composure and rebels against her best friend.
Overall, Emma’s secret fits into a trend that has caused a lot of suffering and distress politically, particularly in the United States. It is significant that The Drama’s screenwriter-director is Norwegian, not American. Kristoffer Borgli—who previously directed the ironically entertaining and uneven black comedy Sick of Myself—may be trying to make a broad political statement about American society from a comfortable position.
But it’s difficult to know what The Drama is trying to say or do, beyond teasing its audience with its lack of clarity. Is it a reflection on how love can blind us—or, worse, make us completely insensitive to others’ pain? Is it a call for more empathy towards those who suffer, or those who may have suffered, from mental illness? Does it suggest that humans no longer really know how to listen to each other? You don’t need to spend an hour and forty minutes staring at your phone to be baffled by what’s happening in The Drama. Why pay special attention when there is no real reward? When the wedding finally takes place, it is staged to evoke bitter and surreal laughter, although it is anything but funny. The climactic scene, supposed to be the dramatic highlight of the film, turns into a sort of shrug like, “Weddings! You know what I mean?”.
One could argue that the stars of The Drama are its main draw, and maybe all the film needs. Pattinson is a thoughtful and subtle actor, and here, he transitions from an untrustworthy character to a lovable one, then maybe to a truly despicable character. He does whatever the script requires of him, whatever it may be. As for Zendaya, she perfectly embodies Emma’s perplexity in the face of how Charlie turns against her; her inability to rectify the situation probably illustrates the emotional damage that lack of communication can cause in a relationship. It’s something, or maybe nothing much.
And sometimes, the way a filmmaker treats a supporting actor tells you all you need to know. Alana Haim, the singer who made her acting debut in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza as a kind of Californian dream girl, plays a character whose reaction to her best friend’s revelation is almost caricatural, which is likely the intended effect. But why is Alana Haim filmed so awkwardly, often in tight close-ups, making it impossible not to be distracted by the hideous grimace that distorts her mouth every time she speaks? She unintentionally becomes a metaphor for the movie surrounding her, which advances without ever really saying much. It deserves half your attention. You might spend the other half mourning the memory of what movies used to be, even the pleasantly mediocre ones.
