The Brooklyn Rail

This just might be the summer of the breakup movie. Our planet is foaming at the mouth, we are a little over five years out from the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and global warming is spitting out fire through its bared teeth. Now we’re dealing with the sexy summertime phenomenon of the heat wave, where sweat and passion abound. But there is the opposite side of the coin: the irritation and intolerance, the indignation, the get me out of here! energy. Say what you will about Materialists (2025)—there is romance, there is love, perhaps even a happily ever after—but it is a far cry from a bonafide rom-com.

So what else is there? Do we have some better, third option? Splitsville, co-written, directed, and starring Michael Angelo Covino, explores the well-trodden remarriage comedy category and tries to reckon with the modern alternative—the open marriage as a salve to the inevitable guilt and resentment core to the marital contract. Shot in a color palette formed mostly from neutrals and beiges, Covino wants us to know that these characters are normies; though they may be trying something new, at their core they are vanilla. The film opens in hyperrealistic circumstances—nearly half of marriages in the United States end in divorce after all—but swerves quickly into madness. With a focus on making a humorous film, human characters transform into clowns and caricatures for the sake of jokes that only sometimes land.

It is a joy to watch Covino take things too far in Splitsville, and there are some magnificent over-the-top slapstick jokes and some wholly cinematic shots of conflict. One highly choreographed fight scene causes mass property destruction in a stunning, Architectural Digest-tier home. The two male leads, whose egos have been utterly shattered, wield basketballs, table legs, knives (only briefly before thinking better of it), and hairspray as weapons. The best moment arrives when the pair inadvertently smashes the child’s bedroom aquarium, and they begin frantically ferrying fish from the floor of the room into a nearby bathtub as an act of rescue.

It is in the final third that the film loses its footing, as the jokes begin to feel overwrought. Nonmonagamy is a comedic minefield, and despite it being a core tenet of many of these characters’ lives, they seem to fundamentally misunderstand the objectives of leading such a life. But this might be intentional—Covino and his co-writer and co-star Kyle Marvin have done this before. The two of them worked together on The Climb (2019), a film about two best friends—one of whom sleeps with the other’s fiancée—that explores how bromance and friendship survive such a betrayal. Evidently, this world of duplicity, forgiveness, and shared lovers is fascinating to the both of them. But the same two men can only write so many versions of this story before one begins to wonder if their satirical outlook on the fragility of men is really all that satirical.

In Splitsville, life is going well for Carey (Marvin), a handsome enough man who punctuates most sentences with a mortifying pun. He thinks he is happily married to Ashley (Adria Arjona), whom he met at a The Fray concert; she gives him road head after all. That is until suddenly her tone switches, and she tells him that she has been unfaithful and that she wants a divorce. We see Carey at his most pathetic, a dog begging for the dinner scraps, pleading with her to reconsider. Seeking comfort in his best friend Paul (Covino) and his wife Julie (Dakota Johnson), Carey learns that same evening that the two of them have opened up their marriage.

“We’re just realistic, you know?” Julie says to Carey with a furtive glance. Realistic, sure, or maybe overly optimistic about their individual progressiveness. Do they really want to be open or do they just want what they can’t have? The next day, Paul heads back to the city for business and the obvious happens—Carey and Julie sleep together. The aftermath is an implosion of all of the characters’ senses of self, and of their literal property. Covino is of course in on the joke. He wants to mock the woke subset of individuals who claim to be evolved, but possess egos far too fragile to handle the reality of having a partner and sleeping around.

While Carey is exploring his possible feelings for Julie, Ashley is using her newfound freedom to take on many lovers. Their shared apartment has transformed into a halfway house for her Hinge hookups; a harem of mostly men and a few women who apparently have slept with Ashley and then decided to stick around. It is absurd, unfortunately so absurd that it is unbelievable. Here lies the crux of the matter: the film lies solely in the comedy genre due to its lack of any emotional stakes. Splitsville teeters into a marriage satire, but sometimes doesn’t commit hard enough, and in those moments, it’s easy to dismiss the entire vision. From the outset, when Ashley announces that she is leaving Carey, it isn’t sad exactly, but it does beg the question of how this pairing ever worked. Ashley is beautiful and boring, while Carey, though also attractive, is a pathetic, fawning partner, displaying pet-like affection toward her. Yuck!

This incredulity in the story is furthered by a series of poor performances from the female leads. Johnson, who just acted in a divisive performance as Lucy, the matchmaker in Materialists, employs that same affectation and performance as Julie. NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast reviewed the film, describing Johnson’s rendering of Lucy as the posturing of something like a meditation coach. Sadly, she resorts to an identical saccharine pretension in this film, her intonation when talking to her husband and Carey the same as when she speaks to her son Russ, as though these adult men are incapable of understanding elementary concepts. Though Johnson’s performances have never felt moving to me, this reads as a directorial blunder, letting her character reside in her breathy voice—a manic pixie dream girl concoction.

Towards the end of the film, Russ and his parents are called into the principal’s office to discuss some of his bad behavior: he “pantsed” his classmate in gym class. Russ’s parents are called into the office first and he waits outside on a bench with Carey, explaining his actions. His explanation is that of a troubled, yet precocious child—he invokes Mesopotamian legal history and cites the Code of Hammurabi, known best for the phrase “an eye for an eye.” This other boy made fun of his small penis and it was only just for him to do the same in return. The anatomy of an eye for an eye seems to guide the actions of Splitsville’s core cast—they don’t really want free, abundant love—they want to end up on top. The instinct to seek retribution when you’ve been hurt isn’t wrong, but it misunderstands the project of a well-intentioned open marriage. Instead, Splitsville leaves the audience with a simple moral: hurt people hurt people.