Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Michael Angelo Covino
Starring: Michael Angelo Covino, Kyle Marvin, Dakota Johnson, Adria Arjona, Nicholas Braun
The indie film explosion of the '90s had a detrimental effect on American comedy, proffering the notion that all it took to make a comedy was to plonk a camera in front of a couple of actors with comic chops. This reductive idea carried into the 21st century with mumblecore and Judd Apatow's overlong improv nightmares. An American comedy that makes as much effort visually as verbally is practically a unicorn at this point, but Michael Angelo Covino's Splitsville is a rare comedy that demands to be seen rather than simply listened to.
From the opening sequence we immediately realise we're in for something out of the ordinary here. We're introduced to two of the film's central quartet, married couple Carey (Kyle Marvin, Covino's co-writer) and Ashley (Adria Arjona), as an attempt to spice up their dwindling sex life leads to a traffic accident that claims the life of another car's passenger. The scene is staged with the aplomb of an action movie, not something the last three decades of American indie comedies have led us to expect. But it's the aftermath that's most surprising. What might otherwise prove the inciting incident for a morose existential drama is dismissed almost straight away as Ashley uses the moment to announce that she wants a divorce. Covino and Marvin have written some awful people here, but they've made them interesting and funny enough that we're with them all the way.
Carey seeks comfort by visiting his lifelong best friend Paul (Covino) and his wife Julie (Dakota Johnson). When Carey asks how they've made their marriage work so well, Paul and Julie reveal that they're in a no questions asked open relationship, free to sleep with other people as long as they keep quiet about their extra-marital encounters. When Paul leaves for the city (Julie assumes that's his code for hooking up with strangers) Julie hits on Carey, who gives in to temptation and reciprocates. But Carey breaks the golden rule of keeping shtum and confesses to Paul, leading to a crack in Paul and Julie's not so stable after all marriage.
Splitsville develops into a madcap four-handed farce as Carey attempts to reunite with Ashley by proposing an open relationship in their own marriage, an idea to which she gladly agrees. Carey is attempting to have his cake and eat it, continuing to pursue Julie, who has split from Paul, having discovered his dodgy business dealings threaten to cause them financial ruin. Paul attempts to get back in Julie's good graces by proposing that Ashley make him one of her many lovers. It's a game of marital musical chairs that can only end in disaster when the music stops.
Splitsville is packed with crackling and witty dialogue, and boasts three hilarious performances from Covino, Marvin and Arjona, while Johnson holds it all together as the straight woman of the quartet. But it's also a visual spectacle. Covino uses framing, camera movement and editing to generate laughs in a manner that's all too rare today. More so than the one-liners, it's the sight gags that leave us rolling, with Covino positioning his actors in just the right part of the frame for maximum comic impact (a shot revealing a character's presence in the corner of a room is an all-timer). There is a spellbinding "oner" that time shifts within what appears to be a single unbroken take to chart the progress of time; of course, it's really numerous takes digitally stitched together, but it's remarkably seamless. A fight scene that leads to the destruction of Paul's condo is the funniest of its kind since Roddy Piper and Keith David battered each other in They Live. The climactic scene at a manic kid's birthday party is a masterclass in bedroom farce staging.
But for all the visual extravagance, it's the characters that hold Splitsville together, even if they can't hold their own marriages together. We're in the presence of four flawed, narcissistic individuals here, and we can't keep our eyes off their sociopathic behaviour. Having previously worked together on 2019's The Climb, Covino and Marvin have an established comic rapport, and nowhere is their synchronicity displayed more explicitly than in the choreography of that fight scene. The female leads may have been a little more developed, but Arjona is the comic equal of her male co-stars while Johnson provides the film with its heart and reminds us just how easy she makes acting look with a role that is deceptively complex. It takes either supreme confidence or delusional arrogance to write a role for yourself in which you're romantically juggling two of the hottest women in Hollywood, but as filmmakers, Covino and Marvin's confidence is present in every frame of their immaculately constructed comedy.
Splitsville is in UK/ROI cinemas from March 27th.
