Desire is a catalyst for disaster in Splitsville, a romantic comedy that tears down, and then builds back up, its intertwined characters to amusingly penetrating effect.
For their follow-up to 2019’s The Climb, writer/director Michael Angelo Covino and co-writer/co-star Kyle Marvin trace the twisted interplay of love, lust, unhappiness, and contentment via the story of two couples whose tight-knit relationships—with their partners, and each other—are upended by a longing for freedom and, then, the decision to act upon that feeling.
(The film is in select theaters Aug. 22 and goes nationwide Sept. 5.)
With Covino and Marvin perfectly paired with Dakota Johnson and Adriana Arjona, it’s a fleet and funny look at destruction as the path to creation—or, as a young boy opines at its conclusion, the idea that “you never really know what something’s worth until you sink it.”
That kid, Rus (Simon Webster), is talking about jet skis, which he has a habit of stealing and tanking while staying at the New York lake house owned by his potter mother Julie (Johnson) and real-estate wheeler-dealer father Paul (Covino). However, it applies to everyone in this sharp film, including Carey (Marvin) and Ashley (Arjona), whose car ride to visit Paul and Julie is marked by joyous singing, awkward conversation about having children, and an impromptu and wild hand job that causes another highway vehicle to flip and crash.
Despite Ashley’s best CPR efforts, she can’t save the car’s female passenger—a tragedy that underscores, from the start, Splitsville’s notion that an uninhibited hunger for sex begets ruin.
No sooner have they left the scene of this (accidental) crime than Ashley announces that she wants a divorce—and, moreover, has been cheating on Carey for at least a month. In response to this bombshell, the heartbroken Carey up and bolts his car to trek through forests, swamps, streams, lakes, and roads to reach Paul and Julie’s vacation home.
There, he’s consoled by his friends, and over drinks that evening, they confess to him that they’re in an open marriage, their thinking being that they trust their emotional and spiritual connection and therefore don’t want to hinder their partner’s physical wants and needs. Carey is stunned by this arrangement and cozies up to Julie in order to jab at best buddy Paul. The next night, though, he’s not joking when—while Paul is back in NYC wrestling with a business deal (which Julie thinks is a lie to mask a fling)—he and Julie get hot and heavy.
Given the circumstances, this shouldn’t be a problem, but Splitsville almost immediately reveals that Paul’s laissez-faire attitude toward his wife is a lie. Upon hearing from Carey about this tryst, he instigates a knock-down, drag-out fight that Covino shoots in extended takes that hilariously highlight the combatants’ sloppiness and exhaustion.
From living room to staircase to Paul’s son Rus’ bedroom, the two battle via a combination of punches, kicks, full nelsons, fire pokers, and baseball bats, culminating with a fish tank calamity, an attempted drowning, and both men flying out a second-floor window to the pool below. When Julie returns and finds the guys grappling, things don’t improve, and in this incident’s aftermath, Carey retreats back to his house—where, in one of the film’s most inspired bits, he’s discovered sitting in the kitchen, in the dark, by Ashley in-between her bouts of bedroom fun with new lover Jackson (Charlie Gillespie).
Still in love with Ashley, Carey declares that he’s not moving out, resulting in a playful time-lapse sequence in which Covino’s camera rotates around the apartment to take in Ashley’s growing collection of paramours, who, once they’re replaced, stick around to hang out with Carey.
As Carey attempts, amidst much hurt, to stay close to Ashley, he develops a bond with Julie, whose union to Paul is shattered by shady professional misbehavior that threatens to put them in the poor house and him behind bars. Before long, Carey and Julie are back in each other’s arms, much to the furious frustration of Paul, who like Carey before him struggles to maintain a relationship with his ex even as she shacks up with someone else—in this case, his BFF, whom he begrudgingly admits is a good guy.
Commitment and selfishness, loyalty and betrayal, and the tension between what the heart and loins want are topics that have been investigated since the dawn of cinema. Yet Splitsville’s likable personalities and wry sense of humor make them feel fresh and vibrant.
Covino and Marvin’s rapport is so natural and relaxed that their hostilities seem rooted in a real, deep past, and as she proved in Hit Man, Arjona is a vivacious actress with excellent comedic chops; her late rendition of a ballad by The Fray is an irresistible showstopper.
Wittiness isn’t necessarily Johnson’s forte, but she’s charming and alluring throughout as the torn-between-buddies Julie, whose craving for compassion and affection invariably draws her close to Carey, a gym teacher whose sweetness goes hand in hand with his goofiness.
As Carey, Paul, Julie, and Ashley fall messily in and out of others’ arms, Splitsville creates additional headaches courtesy of Rus, a young rebel whose vengeful reaction to being emasculated at private school leads to more trouble for everyone. Covino’s dexterous direction boasts more flair than the average rom-com, and he maintains intimate focus on his characters’ wild ups and downs, all of which escalate as the foursome strive, uneasily, to create new too-close-for-comfort paradigms that only heighten their interpersonal strains.
A late birthday party appearance by Succession’s Nicholas Braun as Ashley’s mentalist beau contributes an extra dash of absurdity and magnifies the finale’s madcap atmosphere. That this quartet can’t sustain their present status quo is inarguable. Nonetheless, the sloppy means by which they reconcile their dreams, beefs, and urges aren’t funny and moving because they’re surprising; rather, it’s Covino and Marvin’s dexterous writing that makes the conclusion sing.
Unlike this summer’s other Johnson romance, Materialists, Splitsville embraces the genre’s loopiness without sacrificing its serious interest in (and insights into) the convoluted craziness of love. It’s as ideal a date movie as the multiplex has seen in 2025, and proof that Covino and Marvin—whose last feature debuted at the Cannes Film Festival six years ago—shouldn’t wait so long to churn out another collaboration.
