‘Splitsville’ Review: A Cringe Comedy of Epic Proportions
Thanks to an assured sense of style and magnifying performances from its core cast, Michael Angelo Covino’s ‘Splitsville’ manages to stay afloat, despite a cyclical structure that makes some of its funnier beats less impactful.
I’m going to pretend that Michael Angelo Covino’s ‘Splitsville’ is a Québécois film. Sure, it’s got visual jokes that only Americans can pick up (such as the exorbitantly large CVS receipt for two meager items in a large brown bag), but the film was also shot in Montreal (and its surrounding environments) and contains a fun supporting turn from Nahéma Ricci, one of our most exciting burgeoning talents working today. Whether Covino wanted to or not, Splitsville is the year’s best Québécois film, and fits very well within the landscape of auteur-driven comedies that the province has been financially supporting, most notably Monia Chokri’s Babysitter and The Nature of Love.
From the emulsified 35mm photography of Adam Newport-Berra that recalls the work of André Turpin in The Nature of Love, alongside David Wingo and Dabney Morris’ score that has a similar vibe to the works of Forever Pavot, the similarities to contemporary Québec cinéma are there, even if it wasn’t Covino’ intentions. The project itself, which was co-written by Kyle Marvin, excavates the impacts of divorce through two couples, Carey (Kyle Marvin) and Ashley (Adria Arjona), and Paul (Michael Angelo Covino) and Julie (Dakota Johnson). Ashley wants to divorce Carey, who feels they are no longer compatible with each other after a near-death experience that ended with one person losing their lives over something that must be seen to be believed.
That scene sets the tone for the rest of the movie, which feels like a screwball comedy that revels in the cringiest possible form of human behavior. The good news is that you’ll immediately know whether or not you’ll want to stay in your seat or leave the cinema, because the rest of Splitsville dials up the shock of its opening scene to the eleventh power. I was so stunned that a movie could open like this that I immediately wanted more, even if I wasn’t entirely on board with its comedic nature, say, like Akiva Schaffer’s The Naked Gun, or Andrew DeYoung’s Friendship, which are still the best comedies of the year.
The biggest draw back in Covino’s film is that it sadly doesn’t know where it wants to end its relatively paper-thin story of two couples in crisis learning to find themselves by spending more time with the opposite significant others. For Carey, it’s sleeping with Julie, which profoundly angers Paul, that he also decides to do the same with Ashley, who, in an attempt to not file for divorce, has a completely open relationship with various figures who pop in and out of her house. Not knowing when to culminate your picture, especially a comedy, can amount to a frustrating back half, especially when it feels like the movie isn’t going to develop any of its characters past its midsection, and might actually make them regress.
However, not knowing when to end a scene does yield a surprisingly funny result during a bravura confrontation between Carey and Paul, after the latter finds out Julie slept with his best friend. The scene literally goes on forever and takes multiple twists and turns that are bound to surprise as much as they will make you laugh incredibly hard. The most impressive part of the whole setpiece is how precise its visual language is – knowing exactly what to show, and what to omit, during their version of a bare-knuckled confrontation that essentially amounts to house-destroying amateur wrestling. It’s definitely the best choreographed fight scene I’ve seen in an American film this year, which is saying something, considering how pretty dire the landscape is.
What sets Covino’s film apart from the bevy of other studio comedies is exactly that: his innate understanding of cinema as a visual medium and that the camera is the primary device that should reveal everything about the self-centered characters we will spend almost two hours of our lives with. The blocking, in particular, is perfectly mastered, especially during scenes where Covino and Newport-Berra show more to the audience than they do to the protagonists, which results in some of the film’s funnier visual gags. In fact, I’d even argue that Covino’s knowledge of visual gags as the primary catalyst for Splitsville’s laughs is a better draw than the verbal jokes given by any of the respective actors.
Because at some point, the movie begins to sag into cyclical territory and never finds new ways to make its characters feel as attachable as they were, despite the terrible, egotistical decisions they constantly make. When that happens, I felt a sense of detachment in Splitsville’s structure and overall appreciation, even if Covino and Marvin are always strong and have a great sense of play together, despite having to be at odds with each other and showcasing a fractured friendship that seems beyond repair.
On the other side of the spectrum, Johnson and Arjona continue their streak of career-best performances, with Celine Song’s Materialists for the former and, for the latter, the second season of Andor. Arjona, in particular, steals the show during moments of high-spirited physical comedy, including a cover of The Fray’s “Never Say Never” that may linger in your memory long after the credits have finished rolling. With Richard Linklater’s Hit Man, Arjona’s comedy future seems poised for greatness, provided she chooses roles that showcase how talented an actor she has always been.
It’s because of them that Splitsville keeps us engaged, regardless of whether Covino and Marvin don’t have much to say by the time it reaches three extended setpieces that go on for far too long and aren’t as funny as they think they are. Still, it’s marginally better than the other divorce comedy coming out this weekend, Jay Roach’s The Roses, and is aesthetically far more interesting than that film. If anything, Covino proves to us that he knows comedies made for the big screen shouldn’t ignore how they’re shot, and how visual gags are more integral to our appreciation than verbal ones. Although a blend of the two would’ve greatly helped this film’s case…