In “The Drama,” a frenzied romantic comedy directed by Kristoffer Borgli, Charlie (Robert Pattinson) learns a dark secret about his fiancée, Emma (Zendaya), causing him to spiral just days before their wedding.
How well can you ever really know someone, even if that person is the love of your life? That’s the question Charlie is reckoning with.
Weddings have their fair share of crises, fallouts, gossip and anxiety, and so do the plethora of movies about them. From “Crazy Rich Asians” to “The Best Man” and “Bridesmaids,” the genre thrives on drama, though the films usually end with a neatly tied resolution. “The Drama,” though, takes a more sinister approach. It plays on the performative nature of weddings and reflects on why marriage has become less appealing for many adults in the United States.
Three reporters for The New York Times’s Styles desk — Sadiba Hasan, Gina Cherelus, and Yola Mzizi — watched the film in theaters before it was released nationwide on Friday. In an edited conversation, they discussed the stressful nature of weddings and how much someone’s past should weigh on their future with a partner.
SADIBA HASAN Early on in the movie, Emma and Charlie’s dance instructor says that weddings are “performative by nature.” Perhaps that is why weddings are fertile ground for so much drama. The movie is tapping into the fear I see among so many people of our generation — whether they made the right choice to say “I do” and commit to someone for the rest of their life.
GINA CHERELUS Weddings ask us to display a blissful version of our relationships to our friends and family. But when secrets rise to the surface, it can become hard to control how your relationship is perceived.
YOLA MZIZI You’d never guess just how much is going on underneath the surface because of how meticulous Emma and Charlie are about maintaining an air of perfection. The wedding style in the film is quite simple and classic.
CHERELUS No spoilers here, but her confession magnified their differences in his mind and made him question her entirely.
HASAN Right, Charlie was reimagining all their memories together with this new information about Emma.
CHERELUS Overthinking in relationships, especially when one partner has a tendency to spiral, can lead to distortions and the loss of trust and intimacy. While Emma tries to move on, Charlie is struggling to accept that the woman he loves could have such a dark past.
HASAN The movie made me think about how much a person should share with their partner. Are some betrayals simply unforgivable? I don’t think it’s necessary to reveal everything about your past. But big ordeals, dilemmas or situations should be disclosed, I think, in order to have a base level of understanding.
CHERELUS Sometimes we keep secrets out of shame, not necessarily deception or betrayal. Better communication was necessary between the characters in this film, but having their friends present when Emma revealed her secret — and her being drunk when she did so — altered how they could process it as a couple.
MZIZI Emma doesn’t seem to have many friends outside Charlie’s circle. You can tell she struggles with feeling like an outsider.
HASAN The film also incorporates quick, anxiety-inducing camera cuts. It reminded me of a similar camera technique in the Netflix horror series “Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen,” which premiered last week. That show is also about an engaged couple, and the bride starts to doubt their relationship leading up to the wedding.
CHERELUS Yeah, I agree there’s a trend here. Movies and shows are turning the rom-com, wedding genre on its head.
MZIZI But, to be fair, most rom-coms have a conflict that gets the couple to question whether they made the right choice. Maybe not a hiccup as big as Emma’s, but a hiccup nonetheless.
CHERELUS And yet it’s fairly common in real life, too! We don’t have to look far to find plenty of examples of this kind of shocking reveal in popular culture and even politics — from “Summer House” to the top of government. And, of course, there are serious situations where you think you know whom you’re married to, and they turn out to be your worst nightmare.
HASAN It’s a terrifying idea that your partner is not who you think they are.
MZIZI But it does make for good drama.
Sadiba Hasan, Gina Cherelus and Yola Mzizi contributed reporting.
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