With her playful squint, her knowing smirk, her dialogue delivered as if each line holds a hundred secrets, it sometimes feels as if Dakota Johnson could see through walls if she really wanted to. When she’s deployed in films that are underwritten and underthought (by that I mean Madame Webb), these traits lend her a subversive air that borders on camp. Yet, in a comedy as incisively and hilariously written as Splitsville, she’s able to transform into a human scalpel knife. Johnson turns egotists into clowns; buffoons into adult children; and liars into whimpering, cornered prey.
In the right circumstances, she’s the ultimate straight man. And Splitsville likely wouldn’t work without her. The film is a follow-up to Michael Angelo Covino and Kyle Marvin’s feature debut The Climb (2019). Both men, longtime collaborators, write and star, while Covino directs. Both projects are about friends who have become so emotionally co-dependent that the usual boundaries are obliterated, with violent consequences. Where The Climb was about a man who sleeps with his friend’s fiancée; Splitsville is about a man who sleeps with his friend’s wife.
