Kristoffer Borgli, the Norwegian director of the highly anticipated A24 film The Drama starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson, is in hot water because an old personal essay he wrote in 2012 about being in a relationship with someone much younger has come back to light. Borgli wrote the piece for Norway’s D2 magazine when he was 27. In it, he openly defends his past relationship with a girl who was ten years younger than him and not old enough to vote. He calls it a “May-December” relationship, like in Woody Allen’s Manhattan.
The essay, which is now going around on Reddit in scans and translations, talks about Borgli’s moral reckoning after friends called the relationship “unacceptable.” He talks about 266 movies that deal with age differences and questions how society judges them. He uses Manhattan‘s positive portrayal of a 42-year-old with a 17-year-old as a standard for his own smaller gap in 2012. This is a great time for Borgli, who just finished filming Dream Scenario with Nicolas Cage and is riding the wave of excitement for The Drama, a wedding comedy that deals with age-gap romance themes.
Borgli’s rise from indie cult status to mainstream fame has made people even more interested in the essay, and people on social media are talking about what it means in light of the #MeToo movement. Some people defend it as a product of its time, while others call it tone-deaf, especially because of the plot of The Drama.
