by James Mottram
Co-written by friends Kyle Marvin and Michael Angelo Covino, Splitsville is billed as an ‘unromantic comedy’. Two couples, who are friends, watch their marriages crumble as sex and emotions collide. On the one side, Ashley and Carey are heading for divorce. On the other, Paul and Julie are in an open relationship. And so, in need of comfort, Carey feels that it’s OK for him to sleep with Julie. But then, best friend Paul finds out…
For Covino and Marvin, who play Paul and Carey respectively, it marks their second feature together since The Climb, the well-liked 2019 study of mid-life male friendship. “We wanted to do something in this space, of infidelity, partners sleeping with each other, just exploring the dynamics of that,” Covino explains, when FilmInk sits down with both he and Marvin during the Cannes Film Festival, where Splitsville premiered earlier this year.
These days, the idea of ENM (Ethically Non-Monogamous) relationships is far more talked-about and undertaken than in the past, certainly in the heterosexual world. But can they actually work in practice? “It’s not a comment on whether it works or doesn’t work,” says Covino [left], who also directs. “I think that’s the key thing. It’s the idea that we can pretend to be adult and intellectual, but the child-like impulses, primal desires and fears and all the things that we have as children, are still there under the surface.”
While it might be in the zeitgeist, “our generation is not the first to struggle with monogamy. Or the last,” adds Marvin. “I think that we’re just latching on to the character elements of it and exploring the combustion chamber of this current subject.”
Combustion is right. When Paul is told about Carey and Julie’s night of passion, he loses it. So much so, that he and Carey fight in one of the most house-wrecking scraps you will ever see.
This centrepiece fight was the moment that the whole screenplay coalesced. “When we came up with this idea that it’s not going to be a vocal conversation, it’s just going to be a really long fight where it all comes out physically, we started to say, ‘Okay, this is it,’” says Covino. “It connected us to the tone of the movie and the screwball nature of how far we would go with the absurdity in this film.”
According to Marvin, the script simply reads: “Nine minute fight sequence.” But that doesn’t even begin to convey the bruising encounter, which sees Paul’s modernist home destroyed by these two wannabe alpha-males. The pair trained every night for five weeks, rehearsing the stunts. “There were a lot of things that typically aren’t done as part of stunt choreography that we ended up doing,” explains Covino. “A couple times, some punches landed.”
Nor was it the only physical aspect to the production. Marvin is shown fully naked after a shower, with such full frontal male nudity rarely seen in modern American cinema. With Carey simply getting changed in front of Paul, it was a way to show the “intimacy of these two friends and then the closeness of this group of people, that are just standing around naked and being okay with it,” explains Covino. It was also a way of showing the emotional vulnerability of these characters. “There’s nowhere to hide.”
How was it for Marvin, though? “I’m totally fine,” he shrugs. “Maybe, because I know it’s coming, because I’m a producer [on the film], because I’m part of it. To me, it’s no problem, because it serves function and it serves character. I mean, everyone has a nightmare of standing on stage in front of other people naked. It’s the ultimate fear dream. I think for the audience to see someone naked in front of them… it just unpacks some kind of thing where you empathise.”
While Marvin and Covino are relative unknowns to audiences, their female co-stars are not. Playing Julie is Dakota Johnson, the Fifty Shades of Grey star who this summer has already knocked it out of the park with one modern-day rom-com, Materialists. On the flipside, Adria Ajona is Ashley [above, with Marvin’s Carey]. “Her agents had read the project and called us: ‘you got to check out Adria,’” says Covino. “And we had seen her in [Richard Linklater’s] Hit Man, and had lost our minds. We thought she was incredible.”
Johnson [above, on set], meanwhile, came on board to help get the film off the ground. “We had mutual admiration, and desire to work together,” Covino adds. “And we were writing this project at the time. We mentioned it to her, and then when we had the script ready, we shared it, she quickly responded and said, ‘This seems great. Let’s talk about it.’ And so that came together very quickly, and she came on as a producer, and she brought all the resources of her company, and together we made the film.”
The actress even recruited her friend, actor Nicholas Braun (known to most as ‘Cousin Greg’ from TV show Succession) for the final scene, where he plays a “mentalist” who encounters the characters. “We had this idea with him about doing this magic show where he reveals all these things in a sequence,” reveals Marvin. “And my dad’s a magician. And so, Nicholas and I sat and rehearsed those tricks. I think he did it in 24 hours. He learned all that stuff, all those sleight-of-hand things.”
With Splitsville a somewhat unconventional love story, though, getting the movie made wasn’t easy. “I think there’s this idea of safety, like we have to be safe,” says Marvin. “It’s a very studio mentality; these movies have to make sure they don’t offend everyone, or they have to feel safe. And for us, it’s the opposite. It’s why we love Cannes so much, that people are not playing it safe. And I think that makes for interesting things. And I think truly, audiences don’t want safe either. They want the complete opposite.”
Covino agrees. “It’s like finding that balance between making a film really entertaining and provocative, right? And the provocative, I think, is something that we sometimes forget and lose in American cinema. The safety thing is… we don’t want to provoke people, we don’t want to replicate, we don’t want to offend.” Adds Marvin: “I think we do our thing without hostility. We’re not taking shots at anyone. We’re just trying to have fun and explore in a way that’s interesting.”
Splitsville is in cinemas from 11 September 2025
