5 days ago
8
FILM
Splitsville ★½
(MA) 105 minutes
Many romantic comedies have an alarming side, as in the 1938 classic Bringing Up Baby, in which Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn get to know each other better while running around in pursuit of a dangerous escaped leopard. Still, as far as I recall, nobody actually gets mauled to death. If they had, it’s possible the film wouldn’t be so fondly remembered.
That thought came to mind while watching Michael Angelo Covino’s Splitsville, where the intended comic set pieces tend to be more baffling than amusing – starting with the literal car crash in the opening scene, killing off a woman we haven’t previously met.
Newly married couple Carey (co-writer Kyle Marvin) and Ashley (Adria Arjona) aren’t directly involved, but it’s possible the crash wouldn’t have happened if not for Carey’s erratic driving, in turn the result of Ashley having her hand down his pants.
Adria Arjona and Kyle Marvin play a couple whose relationship takes a turn for the worse.Credit: AP
Still, within another five minutes, the whole thing is in the rearview mirror and never referred to again, having served its plot purpose of prompting Ashley to take stock of her life and ask for a divorce.
You could say the shadow of death looms over the film all the same, but it really doesn’t. On the other hand, there are recurrent bouts of slapstick violence, including an extended mano-a-mano brawl between Carey and Paul, the other male protagonist, played by Covino.
In this case, the damage is mainly to property, with the mayhem staged in wide shot as they lurch from one room to another of an expensively furnished beach house (Covino is careful about framing, which gives the film a patina of sophistication akin to the characters’ civilised veneer).
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The motive for the conflict is sexual jealousy. In theory, Paul is in an open relationship with Julie (Dakota Johnson, by far the film’s most recognisable star).
But that doesn’t stop him from going ballistic when he finds out what she’s been getting up to behind his back with his newly single best friend.
Covino and Marvin are an established double act, having previously appeared together in Covino’s much more successful 2019 feature debut, The Climb (which they also co-wrote). Here they’re meant to be contrasting types – Carey mild-mannered and hapless, Paul more intensely neurotic – yet relatable and sympathetic despite their foibles.
Dakota Johnson is called on to carry the film.
None of this works, and not only because the film struggles to be both an observational dramedy and a live-action cartoon. The fundamental problem is that Covino and Marvin don’t have the charisma to be movie stars: neither has any real kind of track record as a romantic lead, and I can’t see this changing beyond the projects they conceive for themselves (both are about 40, somewhat older than the women co-stars).
This means Johnson is called on to carry the film, which she does by acting breezily tolerant no matter what shenanigans she’s asked to lend herself to: no one has ever seemed more securely middle-class while swearing like a trooper.
Arjona’s role is still less rewarding. Ashley’s primary character trait is simply that she’s highly sexed – which eventually means she and Carey wind up in an open relationship. He suffers in silence while she takes on one lover after another.
Taken at face value, the ending could be seen as conservative. But everything that happens in Splitsville is so remote from real human behaviour I couldn’t care less about any of these characters – except for the irate bit-player who gets clonked over the head by Julie after a dispute about a jet-ski turns physical, with consequences that are never made clear. Perhaps they buried him offscreen.
Reviewed by Jake Wilson
Splitsville is in cinemas from Thursday
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