THE STORY – When Ashley asks for a divorce, the good-natured Carey runs to his friends, Julie and Paul, for support. Their secret to happiness is an open marriage; that is, until Carey crosses the line and throws all of their relationships into chaos.
THE CAST – Michael Angelo Covino, Adria Arjona, Dakota Johnson & Kyle Marvin
THE TEAM – Michael Angelo Covino (Director/Writer) & Kyle Marvin (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 100 Minutes
Michael Angelo Covino and Kyle Marvin’s first feature together, “The Climb,” is the kind of ultra-confident, technically impressive debut that gets you noticed. It’s also the kind of film that serves as great preparation for a larger-scale project – each of the film’s seven scenes was shot in one take, with a constantly moving camera and a full ensemble to navigate. To pull something like that off, you need not just a solid concept and screenplay but a crackerjack sense of timing. It makes perfect sense that the dynamic duo would make a broad comedy next, and their sophomore feature “Splitsville” makes good on every bit of promise shown in “The Climb.” Fast and furiously funny, with several impressive one-take wonders scattered throughout, this comedy of manners about two couples in open relationships is far and away the funniest film of the year so far. It’s also one of the year’s best.
Ashley (Adria Arjona) and Carey (Marvin) seem to be in a loving relationship when we first meet them. Not long after they start doing some truly terrible car karaoke, though, cracks begin to show. After an attempt at getting frisky goes awry, Ashley admits that she has been keeping some feelings to herself these fourteen months that they’ve been married, namely that she may not want to be married anymore. Before she can get even halfway through reading the first draft of the letter she wrote to Carey explaining things, though, he has thrown himself out of the car, running, tumbling, and even swimming the rest of the way to their destination, the country house of Carey’s best friend Paul (Covino) and his wife Julie (Dakota Johnson). After talking through what just happened, Julie and Paul tell Carey that they’ve avoided this kind of thing in their relationship by being open – they can each have sex with other people; they just don’t want to know about it (but if they ask, the other must tell them everything). His mind blown, Carey proposes a similar arrangement to Ashley – after all, they both love each other and don’t want them permanently out of their lives, so there’s no real need for divorce if an open relationship works. But emotions are messy, and open relationships take work. How will Ashley and Carey and Julie and Paul fare as their lives become both freer and more complicated?
Just like in “The Climb,” Covino and Marvin play best friends who have an aggressive, competitive streak in them, and just like in that previous film, their natural rapport goes a long way towards making these characters and their extreme reactions believable. Even more than in that earlier film, though, the characters’ games of one-upmanship transfer over to the jokes, which just keep coming one right after the other in a barrage of hilarity that keeps escalating until things reach a fever pitch that forces the scene to stop. There’s no end to the comic surprises on display, and while some of the bits may seem random at first, such as when Julie and Paul’s son Russ (Simon Webster) steals and crashes a neighbor’s jet ski in the background of a scene about something completely different, they’re always solidly rooted in character, illuminating personality traits that will become important later in the narrative. Every scene is dense with not just verbal but physical humor, utilizing the middle and background of shots as well as the foreground to reward keen-eyed viewers.
As riotously funny as the film is, though, the performers never lose the heart that keeps us invested in these admittedly self-absorbed characters. “Hit Man” breakout Arjona has the smallest role of the bunch, but the deep well of insecurity that she brings to life coach Ashley makes her endearing even when her actions can be frustrating. Marvin’s laid-back, everyman energy brings out a level of raw honesty that he spins into comic gold at every opportunity, while Covino holds himself so tightly as Paul that you can see the aggression waiting to burst out of him at any given moment. An extended fight sequence between the two men showcases their tremendous sense of comic timing as well as their impressive capability for physical comedy; it’s shot in long takes and obviously performed by the performers themselves, making it one of the more jaw-dropping sequences in any movie this year (to the point of receiving a hearty round of applause of the Cannes Film Festival premiere screening). Johnson continues to prove herself an invaluable asset to every film she’s in, revealing Julie’s soul slowly throughout the film. Her matter-of-fact sarcasm fits Covino and Marvin’s writing style like a glove. However, her best moments are entirely without dialogue, consolidating a whole scene’s worth of dialogue into a series of remarkably nuanced facial expressions during a late-film confrontation between Julie and Paul. Even the bit players playing Ashley’s lovers, whom Corey ends up co-opting as his new friend group to her consternation, make indelible contributions to the fabric of the film, particularly David Castañeda as an emotional masseuse and Charlie Gillespie as a professionally lost himbo.
While it doesn’t always feel like Covino and Marvin have anything particularly new to say about open relationships (basically, no one should agree to one unless both parties are extremely secure in themselves as well as their relationship), they go about saying it in the most entertaining way possible. They don’t skimp on making the film technically impressive, too. Their sense of blocking is immaculate in the quieter moments just as much as the ones meant to make you laugh out loud. Other than the aforementioned fight scene, there are several other impressively well-executed long-tracking shots that are integrated so well into the film’s narrative that they don’t call attention to themselves. Most of Ashley’s lovers are introduced to us in a butter-smooth oner that feels like a montage. Another one set at a birthday party near the end of the film has to track at least three different plotlines in one shot, doing so with seamless, hilarious panache. Comedies this formally rigorous don’t come around all that often, so it’s worth celebrating them when they do, and “Splitsville” is as much of a technical marvel as it is a laugh-a-minute-riot. Here’s hoping that Covino and Marvin don’t start seeing other people creatively for quite a while; on the basis of their first two films, they’re two of the most potent comedic voices in cinema.
