1 of 5 | From left, Michael Angelo Covino, Kyle Marvin, Adria Arjona and Dakota Johnson star in “Splitsville,” in theaters Friday. Photo courtesy of Neon
Heartbreak and confusion will always be universal subjects for relationship stories. Splitsville, in theaters Friday, applies the lenses of polyamory and the filmmakers’ unique comic sensibilities to bring new humor and insights to those subjects.
The movie opens with Carey’s (Kyle Marvin) wife Ashley (Adria Arjona) asking him for a divorce after 14 months of marriage. He goes to his friends Julie (Dakota Johnson) and Paul (Michael Angelo Covino) for comfort and is surprised when they inform him they are in an open relationship but don’t discuss their extramarital encounters with each other.
Julie and Paul’s arrangement prompts Carey to suggest to Ashley that they try opening their marriage, in a desperate attempt to not lose her. The two couples’ interactions are further complicated after Julie sleeps with Carey when he’s staying with them.
The script to Splitsville, written by Marvin and Covino, is hardly an endorsement of polyamory. It’s about the potential for comic misadventures, which may offend people practicing ethical nonmonogamy successfully.
Any relationship can only be as successful as the people involved, and Splitsville, which Covino also directed, portrays four characters exploring polyamory to avoid dealing with deeper emotional issues. Perhaps committed polyamorists could relate to the frustration of such characters dabbling in their lifestyle for the wrong reasons.
The first scene of Splitsville shows how writers Marvin and Covino plan to twist Hollywood romantic-comedy conventions. Carey and Ashley are singing along to a song, an obnoxious movie shorthand for letting loose.
The joke is not so much their lousy singing, but rather how the road trip escalates to witnessing a legitimate roadside death, which prompts Ashley’s divorce request. Later, she will sing into a hairbrush, which also won’t go as well as most rom-com impromptu musical numbers.
The whole movie is off-kilter, with slapstick during crises and shocking escalations handled with matter-of-fact frankness. For example, Julie and Paul’s son, Russ (Simon Webster), gets into trouble as kids do but he vandalizes property, which makes the owner understandably upset. Then that angry party takes his reaction way too far.
In addition, Paul and Carey fight when Paul finds out his friend slept with Julie. Their fight is goofy but they really hurt each other and break things.
This scene is a good cinematic demonstration that Paul was obviously not as cool with the open relationship paradigm as he claimed, instead of giving it verbal exposition.
Paul and Carey demolish the house and each other, and it takes way longer than most mainstream movies would devote to such a scene. Of course, the longer and more uncomfortable it goes, the funnier it gets.
Marvin and Covino set up some scenarios that can only go badly, such as a scene with loose articles on a roller coaster. There, the comedy comes from the inevitable occurring despite Carey fighting an uphill battle to prevent it.
While separated from Ashley, Carey makes friends with Ashley’s subsequent ex-lovers. The larger this entourage of exes grows, the funnier it becomes.
It is also tragicomedy because Carey is obviously refusing to let go of someone who is moving on. But then, so are the exes who hang out with Ashley’s ex-husband, bitterly watching her invite new studs into her home and specifically her bedroom. Ashley may not be ready for monogamy, but her partners were clearly hoping for it.
Every character in the movie is unclear about their own needs, which is sympathetic to the human condition. It’s their poor decisions that make them self-destructive.
Ashley was asking Carey for new experiences, to which Carey responded by booking them weekend activities, a common but clueless attempt to superficially fix a partner’s dissatisfaction.
Carey also keeps pushing for a baby only a year into marriage. Ashley’s firm denial suggests having children is a conversation they should have had before saying “I do.”
They probably did discuss kids but Carey thought Ashley would change her mind. The fact that he continues the very same pattern in relationships later in the movie suggests he’s missing the real lessons he should be learning through this heartbreaking turmoil.
When discussing her open marriage with Carey, Julie says she agrees to it so neither Julie nor Paul have to feel guilty, the implication being that removing guilt is easier than being faithful. That is a superficial observation that ignores the root causes of infidelity.
So does Julie really want multiple partners, or just not to feel like the bad guy when Paul desires other women? Paul is introduced while lying and exaggerating, so he is probably the type doing the most harm to the legitimate ethical nonmonogamy movement, using it as a Get Out of Jail Free card.
Paul claims he told Ashley off when he only wishes he had. He increases the value of a piece of furniture or decoration within the same conversation, suggesting that he was already inflating it in the first place.
The story of how Paul and Julie met is already based on a form of not respecting boundaries, if not outright unfaithfulness. Paul was dating Julie’s roommate when he asked her out, and Julie said no at first until he kept coming around.
One could say that’s a shaky foundation for a marriage. Indeed, one of the themes of Splitsville is that deceptive people will be deceptive about everything, not just relationships.
If Paul was honest, it would improve all his relationships. If Carey were more secure being independent and alone, he’d be a stronger partner.
Julie and Ashley both appear to have entered lifestyles with a considerable amount of uncertainty in order to please their partners. They each put those relationships to the test.
Nobody’s perfect and these characters are as flawed and vulnerable as real human beings. Fortunately, these four are funny about it.
Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.
