5 days ago
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Divorce should be easy for Carey (Kyle Marvin), his friends assure him when his wife Ashley (Adria Arjona) gives him the heave-ho after just one year of marriage: It’s only complicated if you have kids or money, and they have neither. But Carey ends up making awfully hard work of it, and so does “Splitsville,” a frenetic romantic comedy that amuses and grates in equal measure as it places two diverging couples on a chaotic collision course back to each other — or at least away from other people. The second feature from American writer-director Michael Angelo Covino reteams him with real-life bestie Marvin, the co-star and co-writer of his wonderful 2019 debut “The Climb,” and once more spans the ups and downs of dysfunctional male friendship. This time, however, bromance takes a backseat narratively to their characters’ respective marital entanglements, and the results are less fresh and less perceptive.
Though it follows “The Climb” in unspooling at the Cannes Film Festival — this time in the non-competitive Premiere section rather than Un Certain Regard — the Neon-backed “Splitsville” reps a step into broader, more commercial territory for Covino: Both the sentimentality and the slapstick have been amped up, while a typically, beguilingly laidback Dakota Johnson lends proceedings some A-list star power as the two men’s most contested object of affection. She gets first billing, though it’s Marvin’s Joe Schmo character who shoulders the bulk of proceedings, as a man plunged patently out of his league in more than one relationship over the course of the story. As a protagonist, he’s ostensibly sympathetic but not quite lovable — though that last part goes for all four principals in Covino and Marvin’s script, which trades in recognizable comic types rather than complete human beings.
Certainly, the character dynamics and movements here feel more schematically determined by the writing than any palpable history or chemistry between the quartet. It’s a problem hinted at by one of the film’s funnier lines, delivered by dickish property developer Paul (Covino) to Carey shortly after Ashley dumps him: “She’s a life coach — what did you expect?” From the first scene, a breakup conversation that continues around a literal car crash, one can’t imagine what ever mutually drew mild-mannered gym teacher Carey and new-agey knockout Ashley to each other — but then the aggressive, self-involved Paul and gentle-natured ceramicist Julie (Johnson) make equally little sense as spouses, notwithstanding the appeal of his substantial income and Architectural Digest-ready beach house.
It’s even hard to conjure a plausible backstory for Paul and Carey, supposedly best friends from childhood: Where “The Climb” was sensitively attuned to frictions and overlaps between different schools of masculinity, “Splitsville” smashes together alpha and beta archetypes to purely farcical effect. More credible is one crucial revelation that suggests how little male pals speak of their personal lives relative to their female counterparts: While emotionally recuperating at said beach house in the company of Paul and Julie, Carey is astonished to discover that they have an open marriage, with Paul apparently playing away on his frequent business trips to the city. So when, during one of those absences, Carey and Julie wind up getting it on, Carey thinks little of telling his friend about it afterwards.
Cue an almighty brawl between the two, spectacularly wrecking half the house and its furnishings with it, and taking “Splitsville” firmly out of the realm of reality — though stopping short of outright screwball absurdism, where its comedy might more punchily land. From here on out, nobody in “Splitsville” behaves as any rational or at least recognizable human might in the circumstances, as Paul and Julie soon file for divorce too, aggravated by the former’s crooked financial dealings and eventual jail time, and Carey goes to deranged lengths to remain in Ashley’s life, while still carrying a torch for Julie.
There’s some droll humor in this pileup of bad decisions and bad behavior — particularly in one running gag that sees Carey doggedly befriending Ashley’s parade of exes, including one hilariously gormless f-boy played by drawling ensemble standout Charlie Gillespie. Covino and Marvin’s dialogue can bristle with pleasingly adult zing and cruelty, as when Julie bluntly explains to Paul why she’s sleeping with his best friend: “He’s kind and trustworthy and has a bigger dick than you.” (The audience gets multiple chances to to verify that statement, though the film is oddly coy about onscreen intercourse.)
Elsewhere, several elaborate comic setpieces feel strained and overworked, throwing ever more secondary figures and complications on screen to make up for a lack of underlying urgency and momentum. In a production otherwise more glossily and less distinctively assembled than “The Climb,” Covino repeats that film’s technical coup of ornate sequence shots snaking around disordered domestic spaces — with the difference that said spaces all feel more busily occupied than truly inhabited.
The stars all play to type enjoyably enough: There’s individual pleasure in both Johnson’s relaxed underplaying and Covino’s jittery raving, for example, though just as the characters never quite cohere as a unit, the actors’ contrasting energies never quite spark off each other. The push-pull kinetics keeping these increasingly raddled lovers together and apart eventually turn from manic to strenuous, not least because viewers are likely to be less invested than the film is in their final formation. Where a film like “The Philadelphia Story” prompts a satisfied sigh at the completion of its romantic roundelay, “Splitsville” leaves us only with the sense that all these characters desperately need to see other people.
English (US) ·