‘Splitsville’ Review: Dakota Johnson and Adria Arjona in a Winning Indie Comedy

What many of us know as screwball comedies — particularly the great ones of the 1930s and 40s — philosopher Stanley Cavell famously dubbed “remarriage comedies,” describing a popular template in which wedded couples drifted apart at the start of the movie, only to get back together at the end. In between were all the hijinks.

For their second feature after the impressively helmed 2019 bromance, The Climb, Michael Angelo Covino and Kyle Marvin return to Cannes with Splitsville, a bona fide remarriage comedy that shows the pair expanding into broader material, all the while keeping many of their tastes and idiosyncrasies intact.

Co-starring Dakota Johnson and Adria Arjona, who play a pair of smart, dynamic women opposite two total goofballs, this Neon-distributed effort will hopefully find a larger audience than the duo’s first film. Splitsville may be less unique than The Climb, but it’s just as accomplished, making for the rare indie comedy in which style matters as much as substance.

From the bravura opening sequence, in which a pleasant drive to a beach house between sweethearts Carey (Marvin) and Ashley (Adria Arojna) takes an insane turn for the worst, you know you’re in the hands of ambitious filmmakers trying to do something different. Directed by Covino from a script co-written with Marvin, the movie captivates early on with several scenes of physical and mental mayhem, before settling into a more classic comic formula — albeit one with plenty of twists to come.

During the fateful car trip, Ashley informs Carey that she’s been unfaithful and wants to break up with him. He leaves her by the side of the road and treks over to the seaside mansion of his best bud Paul (Covino), who’s been happily married for many years to Julie (Dakota Johnson). The two claim they’ve preserved their relationship by becoming an open couple and being “more flexible with the physical.” When Paul heads to Manhattan for work the next day, Carey soon enough finds himself in Julie’s arms, and then some.

The rest of Splitsville follows what happens to the two couples as they drift away from their significant others, casting aside monogamy and venturing toward parts unknown. The situations they face — whether it’s Ashley housing a litany of part-time lovers in the apartment she still shares with Carey, or Paul screwing up both his business and marriage after he finds out Julie cheated on him — give rise to plenty of comic moments.

These include an absolutely bonkers early fight scene between the two dudes that Covino stages like a cross between Jackie Chan and Jacques Tati, using the décor of Paul’s luxury home as a battleground where any household item can become a weapon. Another highlight features Carey roaming around his flat as one man after another walks into Ashley’s life, or rather her bedroom, then winds up sticking around for way too long.

The filmmakers use these instances of extreme domestic disorder to explore what is acceptable in an open relationship, and how far couples are truly willing to go to stay together. As Carey drifts closer to Julie, their partners are momentarily cast aside, seeking solutions that only cause everyone more problems. Splitsville underlines how those claiming they’ve cracked the code on how to maintain a successful love life, whether by sticking with one partner or seeking as many as possible, eventually crack up themselves.

While The Climb was primarily focused on Covino and Marvin, this film spends more time with the women, allowing Johnson and Arjona to showcase their comic chops in scenes emphasizing how much more their characters control their lives than all the men surrounding them. This doesn’t mean Ashley and Julie don’t get hurt as well — they just don’t act like babies when it happens, whereas Carey and Paul adopt ridiculous coping strategies of either pure aggression or passive-aggressive acceptance.

Divided into several chapters named after stipulations in a divorce contract, Splitsville starts off with lots of absurdist comedy, then settles down in its second half to explore the ripple effects of the dual breakups. Covino’s style favors bold camera setups (courtesy of Adam Newport-Berra, The Studio) that either track or Steadicam along with the action in long takes, or else remain in a fixed position until a joke is finally delivered. Humor can be either full-on slapstick — Blake Edwards’ The Party comes to mind in certain scenes — or else slyly verbal with lots of deadpan delivery.

In the roundabout way of all good remarriage comedies, Splitsville takes the two couples pretty much back to where they started, culminating with a birthday party for Paul and Julie’s son that predictably flies off the rails. The great Nicholas Braun (Succession) makes a hilarious cameo in that sequence as a gloomy mentalist, mixing more absurdity into the brew. But the movie never gets too outlandish or silly, revealing Covino and Marvin to be filmmakers who can reap lots of chaos while remaining firmly in control of their art.