There are movies you walk out of ready to argue about. The Drama, which opened in theaters April 3, is one of them. A24’s spring release from Norwegian director Kristoffer Borgli pairs Zendaya and Robert Pattinson as an engaged couple whose perfect relationship fractures days before their wedding — and the film has already divided critics, packed preview screenings, and given audiences a lot more to think about than its romantic marketing suggested.
Who Made It and What It’s About
Zendaya plays Emma Harwood, a literary editor with a hearing impairment. Robert Pattinson plays Charlie Thompson, a British museum curator now living in Boston. They are 30-year-old fiancées a few days out from their wedding, completing final preparations — finalizing their vows, getting their first dance routine right, locking down the reception menu — when the relationship begins to come apart.
The inciting moment comes during a pre-wedding dinner with their best friends Mike and Rachel, played by Mamoudou Athie and Alana Haim. After their wedding DJ is spotted in a compromising situation in public, the dinner conversation turns into a confessional game: everyone must share the worst thing they have ever done. Emma’s answer changes everything.
What follows is a darkly funny, explosively honest film that may not be what audiences expect going in but is bound to spark spirited conversation walking out. Director Kristoffer Borgli, who previously made Dream Scenario with Nicolas Cage and the Norwegian dark comedy Sick of Myself, brings the same instinct for bourgeois discomfort to an American setting — but with two of the most bankable stars working in cinema today.
The Performances
The critical conversation around The Drama has consistently centered on what Zendaya and Pattinson bring to their roles, even among reviewers who found the film itself flawed.
Zendaya is operating in a different, demure register from her previously heightened work in Euphoria and Challengers. She communicates regret and fragility through the discreet way she holds her body, like a wounded bird caught in the midst of an ice storm, and through internal choices that move with assured agility across her face.
Pattinson continues to prove himself as a chameleon, slithering perfectly into Charlie’s patheticness — slimy, loser-like, funny to watch, and, as is typical with Borgli’s writing, frustrating enough to feel real. He is one of the best character actors working today.
Pattinson and Zendaya’s chemistry is instantaneous. Borgli is interested in the way psychic distress bubbles up through the body, especially in the context of a relationship, and his stars are perfectly suited to portraying that turmoil physically. They skillfully toe the line between glossy romantic leads, emotionally complex characters, and comedic exaggerations.
The supporting cast adds texture. Athie’s natural, gentle performance and the wedding photographer played by Zoë Winters deserve special mention. Alana Haim plays Rachel with a sharpness that, depending on your reading of the film, makes her character either the most honest person in the room or the cruelest one.
What Critics Are Saying
The film currently holds an 85 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes. Early reviews are mixed, though there is consensus among critics about the quality of the two lead performances.
Deadline‘s Pete Hammond called it a “darkly funny, yet explosively honest movie” that is “bound to spark spirited conversation.” Empire Magazine gave it four stars, calling it “hilarious in that cruel, keen way that Borgli has proved to be a specialist.” The Guardian argued the film “delivers on its promise” and offers “a provocation, a jeu d’esprit of outrage, a psychological meltdown that is more astutely articulated than in many another more solemnly intended film.”
Not all critics agreed. Some found the film’s provocative central revelation to be in poor taste, and the Norwegian filmmaker’s approach to the subject matter — more interested in social awkwardness than in the phenomena themselves — struck some reviewers as deliberately unsettling without being sufficiently curious about what it provokes. Roger Ebert’s site noted that Charlie, like most of the supporting characters, exists largely as a device, with his soul-searching feeling facile and the film’s ending arriving as unearned.
What most critics agree on is that The Drama is a film that refuses to settle into comfort. It is a high-wire balancing act marrying a twisted setup with a grounded atmosphere reminiscent of dialogue-heavy 1970s romantic comedies. Borgli uses memory-cutting techniques borrowed from his earlier work and recalibrates them into something closer to Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage — placing the viewer directly inside both characters’ perspectives, shifting between romantic memories, dark hypotheticals, and personal pasts.
The Borgli Factor
Understanding The Drama requires some context about its director. Kristoffer Borgli’s previous feature, Dream Scenario, starred Nicolas Cage as a man who begins appearing in strangers’ dreams. His films are structured around one impossible premise dropped into an otherwise recognizable domestic world, and then followed to its social and psychological conclusions with a kind of deadpan Norwegian precision.
The Drama is his most mature and ambitious feature to date, while still feeling entirely on-brand. It furthers his cerebral storytelling approach, ambitiously taken to the next level. Produced by Hereditary and Midsommar director Ari Aster alongside Lars Knudsen and Tyler Campellone, the film carries A24’s signature stamp — a studio that has built its identity around films that unsettle as much as they entertain.
Should You See It?
The Drama is not a traditional romantic comedy, despite what the marketing suggests. It is a film about how much of ourselves we reveal to our partners, how much we conceal, and what happens when the version of yourself your partner loves turns out to be incomplete. Whether Borgli fully delivers on the questions he raises is something audiences and critics are currently debating with genuine energy — and that debate is part of the point.
A24 has sold it as a starry, messy “how well do you really know your partner?” dramedy. It delivers on those expectations, shock factor and all. It is destined to be talked about — built for it, even. Anyone who sees it will have something to say.
The film is rated R, runs 1 hour and 45 minutes, and is in wide release now.
