The Drama has every aspect of the zeitgeist on lock. Two attractive, buzzy stars in professional odball Robert Pattinson (utterly committed post-Twilight to playing freaky guys up to weird stuff), and the more media-trained Zendaya (who may have had her own secret wedding to partner Tom Holland recently). A marketing campaign that generated fevered curiosity without reaching Marty Supreme-levels of oversaturation. The promise of an A24-worthy twist that mainly fuelled said fevered curiosity. And a simple premise that throws a hand grenade into the toxic stew that is the current cultural discourse.
Pattinson plays Charlie, a bumbling Brit in America engaged to be wed to the charming Emma (Zendaya). But an ill-advised game dinner party confessionals in the run-up to their nuptials throws a psychological spanner in the works. Emma is, as Charlie puts it in his draft wedding speech, the person who turns his dramas into a comedy, with her revolting-but-cute laugh and tendency to pants him when he’s getting too worked up over something. And as we know from the theatrical tradition, if a drama ends in a wedding, it’s a comedy; death means it’s a tragedy.
