One of the many things that did not make sense to me growing up watching American films was the truth-or-dare game that seemed to be a requirement in every script. Surely, I thought, people felt compelled to engage in egregious acts in this land of the free because they needed to have some outrageous thing they could share the next time they had to play this game. Humble bragging about your sins was so antithetical to the life philosophy I grew up with; even the script writers seemed aware of the evils of this game because it never led to anything good. A cultural practice that only leads to problems and the representation of which can lead copycats.

This copycat possibility, or almost the drive, is the major problem I have with the film "The Drama" when I try to engage with it critically. Will I encourage other people to see it? Will young people who idealize Zendaya think her unspeakable crime plan to be cool, just as the character she plays, Emma, has thought other people who planned such acts were cool? This is one film that is very difficult to talk about without spoilers, because to what an extent the act Emma planned is a trigger for you will determine how you respond to it.

The film starts off with Charlie, played by another heartthrob, Robert Pattinson, writing his bridegroom speech with the help of his friend. The film is full of clever narrative tricks like this, and as Charlie is speaking, we start seeing the meet-cute scene with Emma unfold.

Because of the non-linear narrative in this scene, my mind went to where few others might have gone. Right after Charlie enters the cafe his behavior is so possessive, I immediately thought this must be after they have divorced and that he’s trying to collect incriminating evidence against Emma. Consider my surprise, then, to find that this really is the first time that they meet. And right away, we have another one of Borgli’s tricks that determines both the moral and plot dynamics of the story. Because Charlie fumbles his way into his introduction in time-tested English, Hugh Grant style, Emma asks him to do it from the beginning, again. And this is one of the questions the film asks. Can we erase history and begin again?

Like so many relationships, Charlie and Emma’s starts with a falsehood, with Charlie claiming that he has read the novel that Emma is reading. The film shows us that the glue that holds this relationship together, again like so many others, is not truth, but strong physical attraction. Here, too, Borgli is observing that we tell many small lies, hide many truths in our relationships, and we tolerate these in our partners and friends we love for a multitude of reasons. Then he engages in the following thought experiment: What is the one hidden truth that you would not be able to tolerate in the person you love?

Here, our Norwegian director resorts to the above-mentioned American script-driver: a truth-or-dare game. In this instance, of course, we are dealing with intellectual, urban characters, so the game is a bit different. While "tasting" the wine for the wedding reception – the proprietors are already complaining in the kitchen about not running a bar because of the amount that has already been consumed – our couple and their friends start to play the game. This truth-telling game is instigated by our couple’s friend Rachel, who dares them to share the worst thing they have done in their lives. They all have a go: one of them used a friend’s body to shield themselves from physical harm, another locked a kid in a shed overnight, and another cyberbullied someone. Lastly, we come to Emma, who is clearly the most drunk of all, and she tells them about having planned something utterly evil when she was a teenager. The scene is an unforgiving public service video against drinking, if there ever was one.

Hearing Emma’s story, Rachel is outraged, and we are asked to decide, through the rest of the film, whether she is overreacting. It is the moment I flip too, and find the rest of the film difficult to watch, always on my guard to see if the director will push us to "forgive" Emma with the narrative. Borgli’s solution to this has been to play the rest of the film mostly through laughs, getting Pattinson to do a lot of Hugh Grant routines while he’s trying to decide whether he can marry Emma, knowing this very dark thing about her.

Some critics have talked about how Rachel is in the wrong here, because although she did carry out her own crime, Emma’s was only planned and not acted on. They seem to forget that Emma, as she relates it in her own words, couldn’t carry out her crime not because she had a change of heart but because circumstances did not allow it. If Rachel is a bad friend to Emma, it’s not because she finds it impossible to overlook the crime Emma carried out in her head, but because she was the one who made them engage in this stupid game of "awful truth" in the first place. Our thoughts are locked in by the strongest bone structure in our bodies for a reason.

In flashbacks, Borgli shows us that after failing to commit her crime, the teenage Emma gets reintegrated into society, as it were, through pure circumstance. The change of heart that did not come on the day she wanted to commit the crime, but a bit later, as we see her cry, looking into the eyes of one of her classmates. This seems to be the moment where Borgli is asking us to forgive Emma most, and he also enlists Rachel’s wheelchair-bound sister in suggesting that Rachel has overreacted and is therefore guilty of destroying Emma’s peace. In my mind, Rachel still gives the best maid of honor speech that the circumstances allow.

Though he puts us in a moral quandary from the beginning, Borgli’s film remains very watchable, with his non-linear narrative, soundscape and brilliant actors. The film has been a revelation for me because I had seen Zendaya only in "Dune" and that is not the sort of film that requires any acting. Here, she inhabits Emma perfectly as someone who is trying to live with her past and has undone her current life in one drunken moment. In the end, Borgli’s narrative falls just about on the right side of not glamorizing teenage Emma’s plans. If the film ultimately works, it is because it resists turning Emma into either a monster or a martyr, leaving us trapped instead with the discomfort of judging her ourselves.