“If you don’t have kids or money, divorce is just like a regular break up,” Paul (Michael Angelo Covino) tells his best friend Carey (Kyle Marvin) in an early scene in Splitsville (written by the two actors and directed by Angelo). Carey’s wife Ashley (Adria Arjona) has just announced she wants a divorce so she can pursue sex with other people, and Paul is trying to cheer him up. But the sentiment really just reflects the way Paul thinks about his own marriage. Paul and his wife Julie (Dakota Johnson) have a kid and a lot of money, and divorce feels like an unthinkable depreciation of assets. So much so that they are hedging their bets against divorce by opening their marriage to non-monogamous dalliances.
Carey is flummoxed and slightly awed at the casual sophistication of his friends, who profess not to be the least bit bothered by their spouse having sex with other people. Carey, who has neither kids nor money, loves his wife and is devastated by any kind of break, up no matter how logistically simple. He decides to take his friends’ advice, offering to open his marriage in an attempt to save it.
Neither couple, it turns out, is very good at non-monogamy. It takes approximately 20 minutes of the movie (or really just the trailer) to realize that Paul and Julie are both hiding a tsunami of insecurity, jealousy, and resentment under the surface of their placid, luxurious lives. When Julie sleeps with someone close to Paul to get back at him for his selfishness, the storm comes crashing out in a tidal wave of pent-up violence, including a literal explosion of water. Carey, on the other hand, befriends every lover Ashley brings home, and they turn to him for comfort when she breaks their hearts. Their small apartment is increasingly, and hilariously, full of her castoffs, which really cramps Ashley’s free-love style. No one is any happier or feels much freer.
