The Drama dares you to enjoy what it offers. Writer/director Kristoffer Borgli's wickedly uncomfortable new dark romantic comedy from A24 runs at a brisk 1h45 mins, starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson as a happily engaged couple whose relationship is tested by an unexpected revelation during the week before their wedding. That is the premise of a thousand lesser films, but in Borgli's hands, it’s something far thornier and more unsettling.

Pattinson plays Charlie, head curator of a fictional Cambridge art museum; Emma, played by Zendaya, is deaf in one ear, a detail that pays off in both narrative and auditory texture. Their meet-cute is irresistible, and the opening scenes are among the more charming romantic moments in recent cinema. That’s why the film's subsequent demolition of that warmth lands with force, during a wine-soaked party game where everyone confesses the worst thing they've ever done. One friend’s is minor, another is mean. Charlie's is embarrassing. Emma's changes everything.

What follows is among the darkest, most precisely calibrated comedies in my recent memory, one that makes makes you laugh and immediately feel implicated for doing so. The premise draws the audience into a spiral of increasingly complicated behaviours, and invites us to question both how we might respond under similar circumstances and whether our own instincts would be any less flawed.

The Drama is deeply topical, and a film about honesty, forgiveness, and the impossible standards we apply to others while exempting ourselves. Borgli manages to make all of this really funny, and that’s kind of a miracle?

The Drama dares you to enjoy what it offers. Writer/director Kristoffer Borgli's wickedly uncomfortable new dark romantic comedy from A24 runs at a brisk 1h45 mins, starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson as a happily engaged couple whose relationship is tested by an unexpected revelation during the week before their wedding. That is the premise of a thousand lesser films, but in Borgli's hands, it’s something far thornier and more unsettling.

Pattinson plays Charlie, head curator of a fictional Cambridge art museum; Emma, played by Zendaya, is deaf in one ear, a detail that pays off in both narrative and auditory texture. Their meet-cute is irresistible, and the opening scenes are among the more charming romantic moments in recent cinema. That’s why the film's subsequent demolition of that warmth lands with force, during a wine-soaked party game where everyone confesses the worst thing they've ever done. One friend’s is minor, another is mean. Charlie's is embarrassing. Emma's changes everything.

What follows is among the darkest, most precisely calibrated comedies in my recent memory, one that makes makes you laugh and immediately feel implicated for doing so. The premise draws the audience into a spiral of increasingly complicated behaviours, and invites us to question both how we might respond under similar circumstances and whether our own instincts would be any less flawed.

The Drama is deeply topical, and a film about honesty, forgiveness, and the impossible standards we apply to others while exempting ourselves. Borgli manages to make all of this really funny, and that’s kind of a miracle?