Splitsville

Splitsville, directed by Michael Angelo Covino and co-written with Kyle Marvin, is a film that seems determined to remind us that comedy in cinema can still feel dangerous, unpredictable, and defiantly alive. From its very first scene—a car ride that shifts from a lighthearted sing-along into a sexually charged disaster that ends with a fatal accident and an indecent sight gag—the film makes its intentions clear. This is not the kind of romantic comedy that smooths over discomfort with glossy banter or tidy resolutions. Instead, it drags us through the mess of contemporary relationships, daring us to laugh not only at the absurdity of its characters but also at the raw pain that underpins their chaos. It is at once a farce about open marriages and betrayal and an uneasy study of how people delude themselves in the name of love, freedom, and friendship. The combination of farcical slapstick and emotional tension gives the film a texture that feels both retro—evoking screwball traditions of the 1930s and European sex comedies of the 1970s—and very much of the present moment, where ideas about polyamory and non-monogamy have entered the cultural mainstream.

At the heart of the story are two couples whose entanglements grow increasingly deranged. Kyle Marvin plays Carey, a mild-mannered gym teacher whose marriage to Adria Arjona’s Ashley collapses after just over a year. The initial break-up itself is staged with a surreal edge: Ashley reveals her infidelities and her desire for divorce in the immediate aftermath of a roadside accident, while Carey is still literally exposed from their botched sexual encounter. This humiliation sets the tone for the rest of his journey, which leads him to the opulent lake house of his best friend Michael Angelo Covino’s Paul and Paul’s wife Julie, played with understated wit and reserve by Dakota Johnson. What Carey hopes will be a refuge turns into another minefield of deceit and temptation, when Paul and Julie proudly announce that their marriage is “open,” a supposedly enlightened arrangement that begins to unravel the moment real feelings come into play. Within days, Carey has slept with Julie, Paul explodes in a jealous rage, and the group dynamic fractures in ways that are both hysterical and recognizably human.

It is tempting to say that Michael Angelo Covino and Kyle Marvin simply recycle the formula they used in their previous film The Climb, with its portrait of two men locked in a cycle of friendship, rivalry, and betrayal. In truth, Splitsville is both an evolution and a provocation. Where The Climb was intimate and melancholic, this new work expands its scope into something closer to a screwball tragedy, structured in chapters and filled with audacious set-pieces. The most famous of these, already singled out by critics, is the six-minute brawl between Carey and Paul after the truth about Julie comes out. It is a tour de force of comedic choreography, veering from Looney Tunes absurdity—furniture smashed, fish tanks shattered, eyebrows singed—to moments of strange tenderness, as the men pause to remind each other not to use knives or to save the goldfish before continuing their melee. In another film this sequence might have felt indulgent, but here it becomes emblematic of the film’s whole approach: an acknowledgment that male friendship, like marriage, can survive astonishing levels of idiocy, cruelty, and denial, but only by tearing everything else apart in the process.

If the men are often the butt of the joke, the women are the ones who keep the film tethered to some semblance of emotional reality. Adria Arjona gives Ashley a mercurial charm, playing her as a woman who seems to crave freedom more than stability but who never entirely shakes off her vulnerability. Her post-divorce escapades—cycling through a dizzying array of lovers, from Charlie Gillespie’s bartender to Nicholas Braun’s eccentric mentalist—provide some of the film’s funniest and most bizarre diversions, particularly when Carey ends up befriending her exes and turning their apartment into a kind of unofficial support group. Dakota Johnson, meanwhile, leans into her gift for deadpan understatement. Julie is at once the calmest and most enigmatic presence on screen, a woman who insists she is content with her “open” marriage even as her heart betrays her. Johnson’s blasé delivery, honed in projects like Materialists, makes her flirtations with Carey all the more cutting, since they always carry the suggestion that she is trying to provoke Paul rather than simply follow her own desires. Together, Arjona and Johnson ground the chaos, their performances suggesting a depth and intelligence that the men, for all their bravado, seem incapable of sustaining.

Visually, Michael Angelo Covino once again refuses to let comedy fall into the trap of looking like television. Working with cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra, whose résumé includes The Last Black Man in San Francisco, he crafts a film that feels cinematic in every sense: long takes that stretch jokes to their breaking point, wide shots that frame the characters as tiny figures lost in opulent spaces, montages that compress months of chaos into balletic oners. One of the most memorable passages is the time-lapse sequence showing the ever-rotating roster of Ashley’s lovers making themselves at home in Carey’s apartment, a gag that grows richer with each new addition. This playful use of form recalls the visual sophistication of classic screwball comedies while also making a sly commentary on how relationships themselves become theatrical routines, endlessly rehearsed and replayed with new partners. The editing by Sara Shaw keeps this chaos coherent, giving the slapstick space to breathe without losing the rhythm of the story.

At its core, Splitsville is less about polyamory than about the lies people tell themselves in order to avoid loneliness. Paul insists he is fine with Julie’s flings until they involve someone he knows. Carey clings to Ashley through a farcical experiment in “open” marriage not because he believes in sexual freedom but because he cannot imagine a life without her. Even Ashley and Julie, who seem more self-aware, find themselves repeating cycles of attraction and jealousy that undermine their supposed maturity. The film’s irony is that these characters are convinced they are living out modern, liberated lifestyles, when in fact they are replaying the same insecurities and hypocrisies that have haunted couples for generations. In this sense, Michael Angelo Covino and Kyle Marvin have created a twenty-first-century answer to films like Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice—comedies that pretend to be about sexual revolution but are really about the eternal fragility of human connection.

The ending may feel abrupt to some, more like a shrug than a resolution, but that too seems intentional. Splitsville does not aim to solve the dilemmas it raises about love, fidelity, and freedom; it merely sets them spinning in increasingly chaotic orbits and lets us watch as they crash. Along the way, it delivers one of the funniest fight scenes in recent memory, a string of unforgettable supporting performances, and a handful of moments that sting with unexpected tenderness. Like its title, the film suggests fracture and disunion, but beneath the satire lies a bittersweet recognition: that people rarely know what they want, that they hurt each other without meaning to, and that comedy might be the only way to make sense of the wreckage. For all its raunch and anarchy, Splitsville is a sharp reminder that the battle between desire and commitment has always been the truest screwball game of all.

Splitsville (Libre Echange)
Directed by Michael Angelo Covino
Written by Michael Angelo Covino, Kyle Marvin
Produced by Emily Korteweg, Michael Angelo Covino, Kyle Marvin, Ryan Heller, Jeff Deutchman, Dakota Johnson, Ro Donnelly, Samantha Racanelli
Starring  Dakota Johnson, Adria Arjona, Kyle Marvin, Michael Angelo Covino, Nicholas Braun, David Castañeda, O-T Fagbenle, Charlie Gillespie, Simon Webster
Cinematography : Adam Newport-Berra
Edited by Sara Shaw
Music by David Wingo, Dabney Morris
Production companies : Neon, Topic Studios, Watch This Ready, TeaTime Pictures
Distributed by Neon (United States), Metropolitan FilmExport (France)
Release dates : May 19, 2025 (Cannes), August 22, 2025 (United States), September 10, 2025 (France)
Running time : 104 minutes

Seen on September 5 2025 at the Deauville International Center

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