To be clear, she kissed him first. But then again, she is in an open marriage, and her husband was in the city seeing someone else. But he kissed her back – although, to be fair, his wife had told him she wanted a divorce and had been sleeping with other people.
This is as simple and straightforward as the chaotic interminglings of modern marital satire Splitsville get, and they only get more convoluted and gently hilarious from there.
The “she” in question is potter Julie (Johnson, Cha Cha Real Smooth, Daddio), who is married to businessman Paul (Covino, who also directs), and enjoying the comfortable life that his real estate investments afford her. The “he” is high school coach Carey (Marvin, 80 for Brady), Paul’s best and maybe only friend, recently married to life coach Ashley (Arjona, Hit Man). Loyalty in these partnerships seems to be in short supply but think on the rules and the situation. It’s not like Carey and Julie are technically doing anything wrong, right? So why does their preemptively permitted one night stand send this quartet reeling?
In this modern spin on Paul Mazursky’s classic “dueling spouses” comedy Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, everyone gets what they want and it turns out they hate it. The strained shared bond between the characters is seemingly the polar opposite of the working relationship between Covino and Marvin, who also wrote the script together. Splitsville is in many ways the natural successor to their 2019 festival success The Climb, with the same kind of delicate ribaldry and compassionate observation brought to life with a subtly sardonic twist and top-notch physical comedy. When Paul comes home to Carey’s confession, the resultant punch-up between pals feels like grade school tussling. It’s years of old, unspoken grudges finally unleashed, an act of catharsis that ends up kicking open all the doors that should probably have stayed closed.
What stops this relationship trauma from becoming a heavy meditation on modern marriage and unfulfillable expectations is the sheer absurdist comedy of it all. Marvin in particular embraces the utter obliviousness of his well-meaning manchild, while Arjona perfectly pastiches the expert who cannot take her own advice. By contrast, Johnson – who, with this and Materialists, has spent the year probing the mercurial vicissitudes of the human heart – gives the story and the comedy a calm grounding that keeps the slapstick getting too out of control. Of the core four, Covino’s performance initially seems the most distant, with Paul presented as the typical middle-aged businessman who seemingly got everything he wants. He almost seems like a supporting character for a while, rather than a co-lead, but that gap between himself and the others is shown to have hidden, desperate depths. His character traits become symptoms of what’s going wrong between them all, in spite of their best intentions. The damage from their suppressed internal screams, of their trying-to-be-cool politeness, is reflected in a surprisingly light-handed subplot about Julie and Paul’s son, Russ (Webster, Lucas the Spider), who has to adapt to this constantly shifting foursome and does so by acting out and destroying the odd boat.
Splitsville succeeds because it never seems fragmented. As a director, Covino dances between the sensual and the silly while constantly exploring the core thesis of the messiness of relationships. Never more so does he strike this balance than during a ridiculous extended sequence in which Ashley brings home a parade of lovers and Carey infuriates her by making friends with them. In less sensitive hands, this could be merely witless buffoonery, but Covino and his cast make these foolish foursome as astutely observed as they are idiotic.
