Sarah reviewed for the Sunday Star Times until 2019. After a career change to secondary school teaching, she now she works in alternative education with our most disadvantaged rangatahi.
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Free love leads to a four-way tangle in Splitsville. Photo / Supplied
Free love leads to a four-way tangle in Splitsville. Photo / Supplied
Splitsville, directed by Michael Angelo Covino, is in cinemas now.
A couple’s weekend away gets hilariously complicated in this absurdist romcom when the unexpected split of one pair collides with the open relationship of the other.
Carey (co-writer Kyle Marvin) is shell-shocked when wife of 18 months Ashley (Adria Arjonafrom Netflix hit Hit Man) suddenly announces she’s been sleeping around. Carey goes to lick his wounds in the palatial home of best friend Paul and Paul’s artist wife Julie (Dakota Johnson), only to find a warmer welcome than anticipated. Back home, Ashley is flexing her newly sanctioned freedom in the arms of a string of modern lovers.
Paul is played by Splitsville’s co-writer and director Covino (he and Marvin went to Cannes with 2019’s similarly themed The Climb) who crafts a fabulous four-hander with a terrific cast and clever scripting. It’s the kind of comedy in which the actors play everything straight-faced as the action gets sillier and funnier. Following a confusing moment of folly, Carey attempts to live back at his pokey apartment with Ashley as her boyfriends grow in number – eventually she’s the one asking them to leave while Carey entices them to stay for ball games and beer (and a film night to watch Dr Zhivago).
The absurdism of this tangled love quadrangle takes the viewer on a fun ride into the land of infidelity that one hopes never to visit. The silliness of the scenarios – over-the-top fisticuffs and ridiculous declarations of intention – also helps mitigate the jarring wealth and privilege of characters like Paul and Julie whose squabbling seems to be more about money than emotion.
Covino and Marvin write brilliantly witty dialogue which self-deprecatingly sends up the film-makers’ looks while acknowledging the luminous beauty of actresses Johnson and Arjona. These sad-sack men take most of the humorous hits, but everyone is handled with such warmth and love that no one’s just a loser.
Throw in a fun cameo from Succession’s Nicholas Braun as a mentalist who performs to unimpressed children at parties and despite its potentially unnerving premise, Splitsville turns out to be a hoot.
