The wind is relentless. I’m standing in the courtyard at the Custard Factory and everyone looks ten years younger than me. I don’t know these bars. I sit on the bench and wait for him to arrive.

I need to get this out. I have always had a quiet certainty that I get what I want.

I’ve wondered before if I have some minor, useless magical power. I speak things into existence. I remember being a child, convinced I was something like Matilda. Why else was my name always pulled out for prizes at the Scholastic book fair?

I’ve never really experienced unrequited love. I can usually win people over, even the ones who start off unsure. He was never unsure. There has always been something else instead, mutual respect and curiosity.

But that is where it stops, which is maddening.

I was already planning to see The Drama. Then he asked if I would go with him, before it sold out, his favourite seats still available.

We meet at the Custard Factory. It feels strange. In many ways we are the same. Same histories. He’s the person I text ridiculous anecdotes about our gentrified childhood suburb. The one I ask for film recommendations.

But in other ways we couldn’t be more different. I expose myself endlessly, for entertainment or otherwise. He is possibly the most private person I have ever met. I found him on Spotify - he doesn't have any other social media - after we shared our favourite 2010s dancehall songs. It is the only real insight I have. I check it now and then, smiling. I know when he sleeps because white noise is his last listen.

The day before, I crossed a line, gently and carefully, and told him I was semi in love with him. He claimed ignorance. I don’t believe him. Still, he is generous. He says we will talk later.

Cinema is church. Not metaphorically, but dogmatically. Everyone has their cinema, the one that formed them. Mine is from childhood, curtains drawn halfway through, ice creams in the interval.

I watched Spice World and Flubber there. I fell in love with the ritual of it. It is damp now. The seats are torn. It smells faintly of a hundred years of smoke. I still go, sometimes alone, sometimes with my three children, trained to perfection. No toilet breaks, popcorn etiquette locked in. It is ours.

The Mockingbird is something else. Not grand, but devout. A cinema built for people who love film, the kind of place that reminds you why it matters.

Tonight, they have outdone themselves.

The Drama presents itself as a love story, but it quickly becomes something more unstable, about perception, control, and the version of events people choose to believe.

The screening opens like a wedding reception. Prosecco on arrival, wedding cake, place cards reading congratulations Emma and Charlie. A rose on each seat, lace wrapped around the welcome cards.

The details are handled by WPTR, turning the screening into something immersive, playful and slightly surreal before the film has even begun.

No one really knows what the film is about. That is part of it. The secrecy, the casting, the sense that something dark is waiting underneath the surface.

Afterwards, he asks me what I think it meant.

I have been trying to answer ever since.

I always feel pressure to sound intelligent about film, to analyse it properly, but The Drama resists that. It feels simple underneath it all, almost like a Russian novel, moral questions laid bare.

Who decides which of our crimes matter? Who gets forgiven? Who gets exposed?

It is also genuinely funny. Not in a polite, knowing way, but properly, unexpectedly funny. The kind of laughter that builds because the whole room is in it together. You can feel the buy-in.

There is a scene with a photographer that completely disarmed me. One of the funniest things I have seen in a long time, and all the more effective for how sharply it cuts through the tension.

The film misleads you. You expect Emma, Zendaya, perfect as always, to become monstrous, cold and unknowable. Instead, she is opened up, made legible. Almost too legible. It borders on voyeurism.

The ending feels deliberately unstable. It never quite lands as real. As Emma’s backstory unfolds, I found myself questioning it – not just what happened, but whether it should be believed at all. It begins to feel like a film within a film.

It closes a loop too neatly for something that has been so invested in mess, in threat, in emotional volatility. But maybe that is the point. You can choose to believe it, or not.

What I enjoyed most was the anxiety of it. It feels like watching a train wreck in slow motion. There is something of Uncut Gems in it, but filtered through wealth, softness, restraint. The chaos is still there, just dressed better.It made me think about writing, about exposure. Watching Emma unravel in front of a room full of people who know her, I thought about my own confessions and the way they invite curiosity, the way they turn your life into something consumed.I think about him, how carefully he moves through things, how little he gives away.

Also, being a bitch is great. I stand by that. This film may contain one of the greatest bitches of all time; Alana Haim, I love you. At points, it is almost unbearable, surreal in its intensity.

The world of the film is glossy and unstable. Everyone is rich and no one’s job is clear. It feels faintly Chekhovian, people circling each other, miscommunicating, performing. Beauty is interrupted by ugliness, vomit, drugs, wait staff rolling their eyes. It is chaos held together by aesthetics.

After, we walk to Kilder and I drink spicy margaritas.

I remember being in the car once, my hand brushing his leg as I changed gear. The way he moved away. Quickly. It fixed something in my mind. He does not want me.

Later, we are outside. It is freezing. The evening has settled after the slow build towards the soft, careful rejection I had already been expecting.

Then he says, casually, we could kiss.

I can barely look at him. I never can, absolutely not in the eyes.

But I do.

And we kiss.

On a cobbled street. It feels staged, slightly awkward. I know the fever I have for this exact moment. He feels cooler, like it had never even crossed his mind before.

Like the film, the evening had felt perfect, building towards something inevitable.

And still, I leave feeling slightly injured. 

I don’t think it will happen again.

But then I have always had a quiet certainty that I get what I want.

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Whatever Pays The Rent’s Next screening is Donkey Skin, as part of Flatpack Festival. There are only a few tickets left, so book here if interested!

Charlotte’s Substack contains many more pieces like ‘On Loving a Fucking Mess’ – her recent piece about a James-Blake-inspired reflection on a break-up led us to ask her about writing for Concrete! Read more of her work here.