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Splitsville


This is the second film I've seen in a row where two blokes wrote the film and also starred in it (see previous review). This time round the two blokes are Michael Angelo Covino (also directing) and Kyle Marvin. The coup was signing Dakota Johnson and Adria Arjona to play the wives, Julie and Ashley. On the face of it, it's hard to believe that these women would be with these two spuds, but the script allows for a suspension of disbelief.

Marvin plays Carey, just over a year into marriage with Ashley (Arjona). On the way to a waterfront weekend with Paul and Julie (Covino and Johnson), Ashley explains that she wants a divorce. The trigger may have had something to do with them being part of a road accident death, a darkly amusing opening scene. Carey leaves the car in a panic and eventually finds his way to the beach house. Distraught, he decides to wallow with his friends until a discretion threatens to blow apart the relationship. To be clear, Julie and Paul's open relationship isn't open to Carey.


What follows is an absurd dissection of the personalities of the four main players, with a focus on the defective Paul and the sweet but stupid Carey. Their attempts to work through the intricacies of modern relationships are ludicrous and yet occasionally mature. Julie's job of Kintsugi, the Japanese art of breaking and remaking pottery, is not incidental to the plot.

It's farce but not as we generally accept it. The dialogue is mostly excellent, funny but not stagy, it's not too fanciful to imagine hearing some of these lines in real life. It has an intriguing soundtrack, most of which I'd never heard before. There's an overall indie film sensibility, highlighted by some fantastically odd tracking shots (the school drop-off scene, for example).


All the performances are great fun, even the sidebar characters, but I found Johnson to be a bit of a revelation here. She has more depth than I had given her credit for. The editing by Sara Shaw was tight and with just the right delay on the shots and Covino's direction is comically assured. The ending constitutes a nice callback to an earlier story of stealing a snow plough, and maybe even a time for maturing and passing the torch to a degree. But, then again, a brawl with the Aussie superhost (Nicholas Boshier) pretty much puts paid to the idea of these guys growing up.

Splitsville opens at the Luna and Palace cinemas Sep 11th.

See also: 

Crazy Stupid Love (2011), directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, is a more 'Hollywood' style of farce but also fun. Johnson is in Luca Guadagnino's excellent, A Bigger Splash (2015).


Stills and trailer ©Madman Entertainment, 2025
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