Michael Angelo Covino’s Splitsville, co-written with frequent collaborator Kyle Marvin, arrives with the polish of a festival comedy and the confidence of a filmmaker who has already proven his gift for dialogue-heavy, relationship-driven narratives. Premiering at Cannes and backed by Neon, the film was positioned as both a sharp satire and a commercially viable comedy with an ensemble of marquee names, including Dakota Johnson, Adria Arjona, Covino, and Marvin themselves. Johnson, also attached as producer, adds a layer of star power that suggests ambition beyond the insular world of American indie.
On paper, the premise is rife with comic and dramatic potential: two couples whose friendship disintegrates when the husband of one pair (embroiled in divorce) sleeps with the wife of the other (locked in an open marriage). The result is meant to be a comedy of collision — one that examines intimacy, betrayal, and modern sexual ethics with both wit and absurdist invention. Yet what unfolds feels less like a precise scalpel applied to contemporary relationships and more like a hammer swung haphazardly. Splitsville is often funny, occasionally incisive, and technically impressive in stretches, but it ultimately succumbs to the very cycles it sets out to critique. The irony at its core collapses into cynicism, repetition, and caricature.
Tonal Mechanics & Formal Structure
Covino and Marvin organize Splitsville around a recognizable rhythm: extended stretches of dialogue, often minimally edited, culminating in a climactic reveal or conflict, followed by absurdist fallout. It is a pattern that declares itself within the first three scenes and is repeated almost without variation. The film’s density of talk is one of its strengths — the script is sharp and capable of handling layered emotional exchanges. Yet the predictability of the dramatic arc undermines its effect.
The rug scene offers the best example of the formula working. A seemingly mundane dispute escalates into an unhinged argument, and because the scenario itself remains conceivable, the absurd reactions are both funny and discomforting. The minimal camera movement keeps the audience locked in place, heightening the claustrophobia and absurdity. It recalls the tradition of stage absurdism, where playwrights like Ionesco would push banal premises to their breaking point.
But this energy dissipates quickly when the formula becomes mechanical. The protracted fight sequence upstairs — culminating in the inevitable destruction of a fishtank — illustrates the problem. The longer it stretches, the clearer the endpoint becomes, and the less bite the absurdity carries. What begins as escalation morphs into repetition. Rather than being surprised by the fallout, the viewer finds themselves merely waiting for the set piece to land. The predictability hollows out the humor, leaving only contrivance.
This reliance on a structural cycle reveals a deeper problem: Splitsville is not truly escalating but circling. Each dialogue-heavy confrontation, no matter the context, resolves in the same rhythm. By the third repetition, the sharpness of the writing feels dulled by overuse.
Characterization & Gender Dynamics
The film’s treatment of character is equally double-edged. On one hand, Covino and Marvin have a knack for creating characters who speak with a degree of naturalistic cadence, giving exchanges a sense of authenticity. On the other, their character arcs are undermined by an overreliance on caricature.
Carey (played by Marvin) is the most glaring example. Cast as a hapless yes-man, Carey is so implausibly inept that his role undermines the film’s tonal balancing act. His inability to assert himself, his guileless willingness to play whichever role others assign him, renders him not just tragic or comic but unbelievable. In a film striving for absurdist self-awareness, this would not be fatal if Carey’s caricature were offset by sharper self-critique. Instead, his presence drags the absurdity into farce.
Julie (Johnson), by contrast, begins as an idyllic dream figure — warm, alluring, seemingly the emotional center of the ensemble. Yet she reveals herself as deeply manipulative, her affections and judgments shifting not from conviction but from calculation. Her pivot from Paul to Carey is predicated less on desire than on testing Paul’s self-realization, a maneuver that highlights her agency but also her opportunism.
What emerges is an imbalance. Men are repeatedly cast as emasculated buffoons — castrating themselves through error and indecision. Women, meanwhile, are afforded the power of arbiters, manipulating dynamics to secure the best of both worlds. The critique here is muddled: is the film satirizing these archetypes, or is it simply recycling them under the cover of irony?
The post-fight sequence crystallizes this tension. Julie becomes the arbiter of affection, while both men are reduced to groveling, competing losers. The gender dynamics are exaggerated to the point of parody, but parody without a clear critique risks reinforcing rather than undermining its subject.
Style & Technique
One of Covino’s strengths as a director lies in his willingness to let scenes breathe. The lack of editing in certain stretches emphasizes the rawness of the dialogue. Minimal camera movement creates a sense of unease, making the audience sit with discomfort rather than cutting around it.
At times, this restraint is complemented by technical flourishes that elevate the material. During the amusement park sequence, there is a corridor walk framed against vivid game backdrops, demonstrating real visual creativity with layering & tracking. The lighting design and camera movement suggest a filmmaker with a keen eye for spatial dynamics and rhythm.
Yet these moments of invention are undercut by the material they serve. The corridor shot is technically slick, but the dialogue it carries is predictable, the scene itself built on clichés of romantic conflict. It is a mismatch of craft and content. Where filmmakers like Paul Thomas Anderson fuse technical bravura with thematic weight (Punch-Drunk Love being the obvious comparison in terms of romance refracted through absurdity), Splitsville often weds bravura to banality.
The contrast is clearest when the film briefly grounds itself in realism. A standout example is the son in the car blasting death metal while his mother spews manipulative platitudes. The scene works not because of technical showmanship, but because it is semi-real, fresh, and grounded. It captures something unexamined: the way buttoned-up suburban kids gravitate toward extremes as rebellion, and the way they tune out parental manipulation through volume. That one moment of realism carries more bite than many of the film’s stylized set pieces.
Irony, Cynicism & the Problem of “Black Comedy”
The central question Splitsville raises is not about marriage, open or otherwise, but about irony as an artistic mode. The film thrives on irony: it mocks its characters’ self-destruction, heightens their follies, and relishes the fallout. But what it rarely offers is critique.
Irony without critique collapses into cynicism. To mock without interrogating what lies beneath is to risk insidiousness. It is why so many viewers idolize Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street, mistaking Scorsese’s black comedy for celebration. The film’s black comedy, unmoored from clear critique, becomes complicit in the very behaviors it aims to lampoon. Splitsville risks the same fate.
The repeated emasculation of men and manipulation by women is not contextualized or critiqued, but simply staged for laughs. As such, the audience is left to consume caricature as comedy. For some, that will be sufficient; for others, it will ring hollow. Either way, the cycle of irony feels less like art than a closed loop.
This is where Covino and Marvin’s film most clearly falters. Its tonal risk-taking, its flirtation with absurdism, and its structural repetition might have added up to something meaningful if paired with genuine critique of intimacy, autonomy, or gender performance. Instead, the irony serves itself. Cynicism replaces insight, and the result is less provocation than indulgence.
Conclusion
Splitsville is not without merit. The dialogue, in stretches, is genuinely sharp. The technical command — from minimal editing to inventive one-shots — suggests a director with real control over form. And moments of semi-realism, like the son’s death-metal rebellion, demonstrate the potential for fresh, incisive observation.
But these flashes cannot disguise the film’s larger limitations. Its structural repetition becomes predictable, its characters collapse into caricature, and its irony drifts into cynicism without critique. What begins as a comedy of modern intimacy ends as a hollow cycle of mockery, where escalation is mistaken for repetition, caricature for critique, and irony for insight.
Covino and Marvin remain talents worth watching, but Splitsville suggests the dangers of leaning too heavily on irony as a mode. To satirize without depth is to risk trivializing what you mock. And in a cinematic landscape already crowded with cynical black comedies, Splitsville stands as a reminder: irony alone is not enough.
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