Directed By Kristoffer Borgli

Starring – Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Alana Haim

The Plot – A happily engaged couple (Zendaya, Pattinson) is put to the test when an unexpected turn sends their wedding week off the rails.

Rated R for sexual content, nudity, adult language, and some drug use

The Drama | Official Trailer HD | A24

POSITIVES

Are we assumedly defined by the actions of our past, or does the proof of change in the present ultimately endear us to deserved forgiveness? This is the single biggest question that steers the exploration behind Borgli’s latest film, and one that in the case of Emma and Charlie comes to threaten their previously peaceful existence, with Borgli crafting an introspectively insightful and enthrallingly entertaining experience that fearlessly feasts on the tepid tenderness of societal vulnerabilities, particularly in the depths of its carefully guarded secret from Emma’s past, which deserves to be revealed with the same kind of jaw-dropping impact as the receiving characters. Appraising an outsiders perspective as a foreign filmmaker certainly allows Borgli to not only creatively tap into all of the hypocrisies and clumsy irresponsibility of our culture, which has only further elevated its increasing consistency in recent years, but also a refreshingly unbiased outlook on contemporary love that inscribes so much complex depth and candidness to the designs of its characters, as explored throughout naturalistic conversations that unearth the unresolved insecurities between them that materializes conflict from a mole hill into a fully-fledged unavoidable mountain. As was the case in Borgli’s previous film, Dream Scenario, he utilizes humor during the most awkwardly tense and uncomfortable of moments between his characters, with the subtly scattered gags almost serving as a morally gauging litmus test for the downright absurdity of the situation, in ways that dares the audience to laugh at something so repulsively awful, all without sacrificing the magnitude of stakes that atmospherically hang over the head of this couple like an unavoidable elephant in the room. It helps that Borgli effectively balances the sharp contrast in tones better than most directors with four times his experience, affording spontaneity and increasing tension to so many surmising topics that feel like a virtual minefield that we’re forced to casually tread, in order to attain answers into Emma’s carefully guarded backstory, but it’s all the more meaningful when that writing comes into contact with some of the production’s most valued aspects towards its presentation, orchestrating an immersive advantage to capture that really helps us gain leverage on the feelings of these characters when words suddenly become sparse between them. Borgli and co-editor, Joshua Raymond Lee, pitch perfection in the consistency of their artistically unsteady editing techniques, particularly in their effortless juggling of dual timelines and a flooding of buried memories that authentically mirror the restlessness of the subconscious as much as they highlight the detachment from reality that plagues Charlie’s feelings for past conversations and interactions that are now seen through a profoundly different lens. As a result, every interaction with the couple after the half hour mark now feels undefined and off-balance, with the aftershock of Emma’s foundation-shaking secret enacting intense and seemingly incomplete cutaways that directly undercut a scene in the midst of making its most contextual observation, where the definition between reality and imagination starts to cloud the perception of characters who constantly fear the worst in what’s to come, adding an element of frazzled fragility to this once stable foundation that felt indestructible. Adding to this anxious x-factor within the appropriately rendered atmosphere is the many intricacies of the movie’s sound design, which are every bit explosive as they are claustrophobically immersive, in order to constantly elevate the tension of a dynamic that grows all the more unidentifiably alien the longer that the movie delves into its second hour. While it’s meaningful enough that the film’s presentation occasionally deviates towards Emma’s vantage, with the audible grogginess of her character being half deaf, it’s even more alluring when foundational components of the varying environments start to ring relentlessly into the established isolation factor of the depicted character, imbedding a corresponding heaviness that crafts a chaotic intensity that makes every ting of the glass, or closing of a door feel inescapably condemning by the sharply stinging sensation of their intrusion, in turn coming as close to effectively rendering a situational panic attack as any movie that I’ve experienced in recent memory. But despite Borgli’s breathtaking combination of writing and directing that maximizes the tension of every tenderly intimate scene between Emma and Charlie feeling catastrophic, the film simply wouldn’t be as impactful as it is without the dependable work of Zendaya and Robert Pattinson combining on two of the most complexly layered and nuancedly enacted performances doing all of the heavy lifting in front of the lens, offering a sensational showcase between the two that never overvalues one for the sacrifice of the other. In a majority of the narrative focus, Pattinson effortlessly embodies the quirkiness and unstable neurosis that plague Charlie’s torturous vantage point, channeling both the head-over-heels passion that he feels for Emma, but also the repulsive desperation that springs from her uncovered secret. while Zendaya, in walking a tight rope of error of her character’s own duality, readies enough sweetly charming sensibilities to a character eventually influenced by the danger and mystique of her moral ambiguity, offering ample opportunity for the audience to fall in love and feel betrayed by her, in the same breath as Charlie, with the duo tapping into the waves of intimately warm and confrontationally conflicting chemistry that serves fittingly to their love on the rocks dynamic that feels every bit honest as it does intuitive.

NEGATIVES

Despite Borgli assembling a film that I found twice as endearing and conversationally stimulating as his previous film, there are some disengaging choices with the overall execution that didn’t work for my own personal expectations towards the product, such as some stirringly somber sound cues from the mixing that bordered on ignorantly tasteless, even in the confines of a movie that samples enough thick humor to keep audiences from being sternly serious with it. While the humor itself attained a surprisingly effective consistency for someone as difficult to make laugh as me, there are some piercingly triggering uses during the second act that I wish were omitted from the finished product all together, even if their intention was to articulate the unsuppressed trauma that sprung from them, as a means of garnering empathy towards one particular character. It’s one of those examples where you could extinguish it from the film, and the character study would lose nothing as a result, but it outlines the occasional hinderances with Borgli’s fearless direction that could use a little more sensitivity and grace in its rendering, leaving an inevitable distancing for certain audiences who will undoubtedly take offense to moments that are constructed quite abrasively. On top of this, while the secret itself is of alarmingly disturbing content that deserves all of the attention in the world towards resolving it, I can’t exactly say that in Charlie’s shoes that it would exactly threaten my feelings for someone who I’m so evidentially in love with, especially considering Emma herself isn’t exactly entirely responsible for the disgusting action that she’s revealed to be. Part of me understands that Borgli used this device as a means of fishing out enough redeeming empathy without sacrificing the disdain that you have towards the immaturity of the character’s past, but I never found the magnitude of what she’s guilty of to be irreplicable to the person she’s grown to become, and despite my appreciation for Borgli appraising focus to a very important societal conflict, I wish that the conflict itself would’ve been more condemning and possibly unforgiveable to what her younger self would commit, as a means of immersing us further in the difficulty of Charlie’s decision. Finally, the ending itself even left a bit of a bad taste of neat and tidy convenience to the resolution of the conflict, particularly with this abruptly rushed and unrealistically enacted final scene that concludes matters at the most illogical point as anywhere that the movie could’ve finished. While my problem isn’t necessarily as tied to where it leaves Emma and Charlie when we say goodbye to them, as the movie foreshadows quite early during another scene that a satisfying ending isn’t in the cards, it’s more so in how it got to that intended point while failing to capitalize on any of the preconceived confrontation that spawned from a wedding sequence that earned every ounce of the movie’s encompassing title, with a strangely surreal and seemingly fantastically rendered scene being used as the exclamation point of clarity to comprise closure to intentions that feel surmised out of thin air, where another scene or two could’ve attained believability for a pill as hard to swallow as this one.

OVERALL
The Drama is a provocatively profound and uncomfortably unapologetic what if? scenario into the ugliest depths of ones buried past, particularly one reveling in the tension of a love-on-the-rocks couple who find their upcoming wedding day threatened by a nuptial apocalypse leveling everyone and everything in its devastating wake. Despite Kristoffer Borgli’s black comedy encompassing the kind of squirm scenario entertainment for a particular kind of audience vicariousness, the film is aided tremendously by an artistically immersive presentation, charmingly endearing lived-in chemistry between Zendaya and Robert Pattinson, and stirring social commentary that poses as many questions towards societal norms as it does the legitimacy of love between its disastrous duo, leveling a disturbingly devious dilemma that goes down smooth without the help of a free bar or live music

My Grade: 7.8 or B+