“Sometimes you gotta sink something to know what it’s worth.” If one mantra defines the approach that writers and co-leads Michael Angelo Corvino and Kyle Marvin have taken to Splitsville, a fascinating new screwball comedy, it’s this sentiment. The characters in Splitsville do crazy things, but for relatable reasons.

It’s centred around four dysfunctional late thirtysomethings; nice guy Carey (Marvin), his sultry wife Ashley (Adria Arjona), his best friend Paul (Corvino), and Paul’s wife Julie (Dakota Johnson), with whom Carey is secretly in love. Things get off to a flying start when Ashley tells Carey, shortly after a comedic near-death experience, that she’s leaving him to sleep with other people. A crestfallen Carey finds solace in Paul and Julie, who inform him they’re “open.”

That means that even though they love each other physically, mentally and spiritually, forgiveness is built into their relationship. Paul even tells Carey his wife can sleep with anyone – even Carey – and it won’t bother him. Unsurprisingly, Paul takes up the opportunity with catastrophic results.

On this basic premise, Corvino and Marvin set up a myriad of absurd, cartoonish, but somehow deeply relatable scenarios. A fight scene between two best friends in a luxury house, a roadside tragedy undercut by a flaccid penis, a man riding a rollercoaster clinging onto bags of fish, a boyfriend navigating a horde of his girlfriend’s young male lovers. These stories proceed in chapters running almost in real-time, with flashes forward in weeks and months, to show us the long term consequences of reckless decisions. Each scene, each moment, is mined for its increasing chaos, in a way not dissimilar to Punch Drunk Love or even Darren Aronofsky’s mother! In the world of Splitsville, all that is stable will come asunder. The only surety is entropy.  It’s a clever approach, allowing us to bask in the comic microdetails while the narrative clips along.

But most of all, Splitsville – the second film from Corvino and Marvin after 2019’s The Climb – is actually funny. It’s not, despite the press, a film overly concerned with open relationships, or closed ones. The targets are squarely human frailties – men, women, even children – and our capacity for optimism, dignity and rebirth in the face of abject humiliation. In other words, what it’s all about. It’s about time.

 

Splitsville opened yesterday in cinemas.