‘Splitsville’ Director Michael Covino on Making Bawdy Comedy That Looks Like Art House Cinema

Michael Covino‘s directorial debut The Climb was the exciting American indie discovery of the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. A hilariously offbeat buddy dramedy co-starring and co-scripted by Covino and his creative partner Kyle Marvin, the film’s long-take bravura and emotional subtlety earned it an Un Certain Regard Coup de Coeur award and established the director as a new talent with a devious eye for the contradictions of friendship and modern masculinity.

Now, five years later, he returns to the Croisette with Splitsville, a brasher but no less artful follow-up screening in the Cannes Premiere section. Covino and Marvin once again co-wrote the film and star opposite Dakota Johnson and Adria Arjona. Splitsville opens with Ashley (Arjona) abruptly asking for a divorce, leaving her well-meaning new husband Carey (Marvin) reeling. Seeking support, Carey turns to his close friends Julie (Dakota Johnson) and Paul (Covino), only to be stunned by the revelation that the key to their seemingly happy marriage is an open relationship. But when Carey crosses a boundary, the delicate balance between all four rapidly unravels, plunging their friendships — and love lives — into a cascade of self-justification and emotional denial, all of it expressed through sharp dialogue and uproarious physical comedy.

“The goal was to make something wildly entertaining and emotionally honest,” Covino tells THR. “Something that feels familiar in the setup but constantly surprises in the execution.”

Shot on 35mm film by cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra, Splitsville, like The Climb, again has a visual elegance uncommon to most American comedies, with camera movement and staging that reflect Covino’s affection for silent film slapstick and a distinctly European sense of formal control.

Ahead of Splitsville‘s Cannes premiere, Covino spoke with THR about blending sharp character work with comedic absurdity and how one wildly over-the-top fight scene became the emotional center of the film.

There’s some continuity with The Climb in this film, in theme and style, but there are also differences. What were the creative origins of the project and how did it take shape? 

After we made The Climb, Kyle and I started working on a couple of different stories and scripts that were a bit bigger — different themes, different kinds of worlds. We were stepping outside of that relationship comedy space we had done with The Climb, where we were exploring friendship and love and infidelity — just all the messy parts of love and friendship. This project really came out of a desire to get back to something we could make in a more contained way. Something we didn’t have to ask for a ton of permission to do.

At the same time, I was newly engaged — on the precipice of getting married — and I think that brought up a lot of conversations. Kyle and I started talking about this idea of what happens when someone gets married and immediately begins to wonder if they made a mistake. What if they married the wrong person — or they’re just not sure? What does it look like when someone pulls that rip cord and everything spirals from there?

We also kept coming across articles — there was something in the zeitgeist. This conversation around non-monogamy and open relationships just kept popping up. People were talking about it more openly, exploring it more seriously. That kind of became the kernel of the idea.

At the heart of it, I think we’re drawn to characters who convince themselves they’ve got it all figured out — when they very clearly don’t. That really became the backbone of the film. Not that open relationships can’t work — some people really are evolved in that way. But even in those situations, there are times where someone tells themselves, “I’m fine, I don’t get jealous, I’m emotionally mature” — but somewhere in there, that inner child still exists. It’s like when a little kid sees another kid playing with their toy — they get upset. Obviously, adult relationships aren’t toys, but those basic, instinctual reactions don’t completely go away. We try to subdue them, but they’re still in there.

So for us, the comedy really came from placing these characters — these supposed grown-ups — in a world where they’re pretending to have it all figured out, while emotionally, they’re still reacting like kids. That tension is what we love exploring.

Yeah, going into the film, I was really curious about how you were going to handle those zeitgeisty ideas of open marriage, because it’s a topic that’s so much in the cultural air. I found myself thinking, OK, what’s the take going to be?

The intention was very much not to make any kind of commentary on open relationships. I don’t have an agenda — Kyle and I don’t have a horse in this race. We’re not trying to make a statement about whether it works or doesn’t work. Everything we do starts from character. For us, it’s always about exploring these absurd situations. We put our characters into these wild scenarios and see how they respond — hopefully in ways that feel surprising and human, because that’s where the comedy comes from. So it’s all really situation-driven.

But I think, by nature, the inevitable conclusion of a story like this ends up being about some kind of acceptance — or at least reaching a point where you’re OK with things — because that’s kind of all we can do in life. I mean, I think that’s why I’m drawn to stories that deal with these kinds of relationships and situations — because we all go through versions of them in different ways. And comedy is just such a fun way to explore that. Not that this is meant to be some sort of coping mechanism, but there’s something inherently comedic in the absurdity of real life.

And I think Kyle and I, when we’re writing, tend to gravitate toward that messiness in love. It’s sort of our ethos — finding the beauty in the chaos, the comedy in the confusion, and ultimately the acceptance that…this is life. This is just what it is. And it’s all we can do. 

So if I had to be prescriptive about what we’re after, especially in this film, I’d say it’s about finding a kind of comedic truth — not some definitive right or wrong about the choices these characters are making, or about how open relationships should work. 

How do you and Kyle write together? I read somewhere that you act out scenes as you’re writing them, and that’s part of the process very early on. 

We start with a really compelling idea or emotional concept we’re chasing. It’s not always super specific at the beginning, but there’s a strong feeling or theme we’re interested in exploring. With this one, we had a pretty clear sense of the space and the ideas we wanted to explore early on.

From there, we start developing the characters. We’ll say, OK, this character is like this, that character is like that. Some of them lean into archetypes a bit, some don’t — but we start from those broad strokes. Then, kind of in this strange, backward way, we start mapping the plot.

It’s a little unusual because we define the characters, then map out the plot, and then check to see if it all fits together. From there, we keep going back and forth, refining the characters by continuing to revise the plot. So we’re constantly working backward into more specificity. Layer by layer, we add themes, jokes, recurring bits — those all come as we do more passes on the script and find more threads that connect. It’s really about building these connections — so that things that happen at the beginning can pay off later, and everything feels integrated. From a technical standpoint, a lot of our process is just constantly reworking the plot to better understand the characters and vice versa. It’s not always like that, but it was this time.

Then, once we get into scene work, Kyle and I really put things on their feet. Like, we’ll act out the scenes ourselves, just to see how they play. We’ll read with each other, sometimes we’ll bring someone else in to read a part — especially before the actors are officially involved. And we’re listening — does it work? Is it funny? Do the jokes land? Sometimes we’ll improvise within the scene and come up with something better. Then we go back and rewrite based on that improvisation. That early-stage process is super important for us. And because we have the luxury of being the actors in the film, we get to take that time — well before we’re actually on set — to find the humor, refine the dialogue and just keep making it better.

There are so many physical comedy scenes in this movie that I love. Tell me about creating that central fight scene. It’s so great. It’s like Charlie Chaplin meets Jackie Chan meets Step Brothers. 

Yeah, that was one of the big ideas from the early stages. It was almost like our setup. We wanted this movie to be about people pretending everything’s fine — “open relationship, we’re cool, everything’s fine”— but in reality, nothing’s fine at all. And then we wanted that communicated in the most physical way possible, where all of the emotions come out through pure physicality, culminating in this absurdly long and unnecessary fight sequence. That was honestly one of the first ideas we had. We had the basic concept, and then very quickly landed on the car crash and the fight scene. And then we thought, “OK, we have to make this movie,” because those two moments were things you wouldn’t typically see in a film about this subject matter. Usually, it’s a bunch of intellectual people sitting around in the Hamptons, talking about their feelings around infidelity and stuff. But this felt fun and subversive — something more in line with our taste and style.

As for how we did it — it was a lot of rehearsal. It was just me, Kyle and our amazing stunt coordinator. We choreographed the whole thing together, coming up with absurd ideas and trying them out. Kyle and I got memberships at this climbing gym, and every night we’d go climb to stay in shape. Then, for about 30 to 45 minutes, we’d use these huge mats they had to throw each other around. We’d be off in the corner doing these insane moves, and these French Canadian boulderers would walk by like, “WWE? What the fuck are these guys doing?” But it was perfect — there was space, there were mats and everyone left us alone. It was a lot of fun, but definitely physically intense. The whole downstairs section of the fight — we shot that in one take. We did six or seven takes of it. There are cuts in the final version, but initially, we wanted to do it all as one master. And there are versions that totally work like that — where we never cut.The exhaustion at the end is real. The breathing, the heaviness — that’s because we were actually doing all of it. Jumping on each other, lifting, flipping, slamming into walls. The day after our first shoot, Kyle’s ribs were black and blue. I was like, “Let’s do more takes,” and he was like, “Dude, every time you slam me into that wall, it knocks the wind out of me.” So yeah — it was pretty wild. Physically, it was a lot. But also, one of the most fun and ridiculous things we’ve ever done.

There are several more physical comedy scenes I really want to talk about. I mean, just the opening: You have an actual car crash and then — I guess you could call it a very visceral dick joke? Then there’s that prolonged credit sequence of Kyle just running and staggering through nature. But the scene that probably made me laugh the hardest is when he’s on the roller coaster and trying to hold onto all of those bags of goldfish. A lot of the comedy really has an old-school silent film quality to it. Where does this physical element come from in your filmmaking? I understand you have a background in sports. Is that part of it? 

From a personal standpoint as an actor, definitely. Kyle and I both come from physical backgrounds. Kyle grew up mountaineering, and I played sports until I was 22. I played college football and lacrosse. I’ve always loved sports — being on a team, being physical. I was a quarterback, so I’ve been hit in the head many, many times. But I loved that part of it. It’s something I miss now, something that’s in the past, but when I get the chance to train and be physical for something like this, it scratches that itch. And that’s really fun.

But I guess the impulse as a filmmaker comes from somewhere else. My grandparents and my parents introduced me to Charlie Chaplin when I was really young. I used to dress up like him for Halloween — I was obsessed. I’d mimic the way he walked, the way he used his cane — the whole thing. I don’t know, maybe that’s why I still bow my feet out when I walk. Maybe not. But I think there’s something in me that was kind of hardwired early on to believe: This is what comedy is.

Watching all those films as a kid — I just got it. That stuff made sense to me. And before I really considered myself a cinephile — or an aspiring cinephile, or even just someone who appreciates quality films — I was watching the Farrelly Brothers. Arthur Hiller, stuff from the ’70s that my dad showed me. Blake Edwards, all the Pink Panther movies. That’s the stuff I grew up on. It’s all filled with amazing physical comedy. And Jim Carrey — he was my favorite actor growing up as a kid. No one came close. I used to watch In Living Color and just think, “Who is this guy? How does he move his face and his body like that?” It blew my mind.

So yeah, then you go to film school, you study cinema, you learn the craft, you make movies — but at the end of the day, what I always gravitate toward, what I hold closest, is that physical comedy. That slapstick energy. That’s what made me fall in love with film in the first place. I think it was inevitable that I’d want to make something that feels cinematic, that has a real point of view — where there’s intention behind the way the camera moves and how the actors move within the frame. I care about mise en scène, and all of that. But ultimately, I want to make people laugh. And I don’t think you need much to do that. Those early silent films proved it — you don’t need words to make people laugh really, really hard. You just need a clean setup and well-executed physical dynamics.

That’s always at the core of what we’re doing in a scene — how do we simplify it? How do we make the setup clean? It’s like: a guy trying to hold 12 bags of fish on a roller coaster. That’s it. It’s not rocket science. You don’t need more than that. (Laughs.)

So yeah, that’s always there for me. Build the story, make sure it’s grounded in real emotion, tell something people actually care about — but also, find space for the scenes that are just purely fun and entertaining. I think that’s the balance we’re always chasing.

You just touched on this, but the next thing I wanted to talk about is the way you shoot your movies. They’re kind of like buddy comedies but they’re filmed like European art house movies — which is so refreshing. Everyone in the industry talks about how there isn’t a place in the movie theater for comedy and adult rom-coms anymore, but you’re doing yours in such a cinematic way. What’s the thinking behind your approach? 

Yeah, I mean — it’s really important. From a producer standpoint, I kind of see a wide open lane, frankly. It can be both. There’s this whole type of movie that used to exist, and I feel like there’s space for it again. There was a long tradition — especially in French and Italian cinema, but also in American cinema — of cinematic comedies that dealt with relationships and real people. You think of Ettore Scola, Lina Wertmüller, Maurice Pialat — or Woody Allen right? There was a time when people would go to theaters to see comedies that were wildly funny but also had a strong point of view — comedies made by filmmakers. That kind of film isn’t gone, but I think it’s not what we expect when we go to see a comedy in a theater today. We expect flatter lighting, traditional setups, tons of cutting — fast, fast, fast — and often less visual patience than what’s afforded to dramas or thrillers or other kinds of movies. And I don’t totally understand why.

So I wouldn’t say we set out thinking, “We have to make something super cinematic.” It’s more like, I just have no interest in rolling the camera unless the frame is interesting. Unless there’s a concept behind how we’re shooting the scene. When you come in with that point of view, that becomes the bar. And we don’t always hit it, but the goal is always to have a perspective, a reason, a visual idea driving the choices.

We talk a lot about perspective. Adam Newport-Berra, who shot the film, did an incredible job bringing that to life in a really beautiful, cinematic way. We shot on film. But for us, it’s always: what’s the point of view? How are we operating the camera? Why is the camera moving? Why is it not moving? Why is it placed where it is?

You don’t always have the answer right away — but through those questions, an answer reveals itself. A lot of these scenes, I came in with a really strong visual idea of how I wanted to shoot it. Sometimes when we’re writing, it’s a very visual process — we’re literally writing in the camera moves. Other times, we get to the scene and say, “OK, now let’s find it. Let’s figure out how to enter it.”

But it should never be the default you sometimes see in studio comedies — wide establishing shot, then straight into coverage, boom-boom-boom, cut-cut-cut. If anything, in this film, we often reversed that. We’d be in close, inside the moment, then pop out to a wide — these establishing shots that reveal what’s really going on. That shift became part of the perspective.

Even in the, uh, “dick reveal” scene, you’re not controlling the camera’s perspective in a traditional way. You have to be inside the emotional ride of what just happened. And then you pop out to a wider, more objective shot that reveals the full absurdity of the situation. That’s the kind of visual language we’re always chasing — trying to make comedy that’s not just funny, but cinematic, purposeful, and surprising.

I got to watch a screener of the film on my laptop to prepare for this interview, and I’ll admit that I actually rewound that scene and watched it again, wondering, “Is his dick visible in the scene before that reveal?” 

(Laughs) No, no, it’s out of the frame. We almost put in a shot before that where you do you sort of see it, like out of focus and to the side. Maybe 5 percent of the audience would have caught it, but we decided to really just hide it — like, let’s let this be a pure reveal. 

In a similar vein, I found the music choices really compelling — consistently interesting, off-beat and surprising.

That’s so cool to hear. I love the music in this movie. I think our composers did an incredible job with the heavy lift of the score. It’s always about finding that balance — between score and source music, and blending them in a way that creates a world. For this movie specifically, I wanted it to have a musical DNA. I feel like when music is done well — especially when you’re working with motifs and building really strong, melodic themes — it can establish the emotional throughline of the film in a really powerful way.

There’s something crucial about having it all feel cohesive, like it’s part of the same world. And that can be a heavy lift. You’re trying to find music that works together — not necessarily all from the same genre or sound, but that still feels emotionally connected. We dug deep to find songs that could speak to one another, that felt like they belonged together in the same emotional universe. So yeah, it was a bit of a puzzle.

But it’s one of my favorite parts of the process. With this movie, we were never trying to pretend that this isn’t a film. Like, we’re not aiming for hyper-realism. Hopefully, the emotions land and people buy what the characters are feeling and doing — but at the same time, it’s totally okay for the score to swell, or to become a little over-the-top, because that’s kind of the point. The characters are letting their emotions drive the story, and in some ways they’re taking over. Each character is operating from their own self-interest, and I think the score reflects that. Sometimes it leads the way — it’s a little ahead of the action, pushing the story in a certain direction. That’s part of the fun. It’s a more playful use of score, and whether it works or not, I don’t know — but for me, it felt right to lean into it. To let the music take center stage and be bold — maybe even to an absurd extent at times. Like, really? This is the music cue right now? Yup. That’s kind of the joke. It’s part of reminding the audience that this is an absurd comedy.

In relation to The Climb, this film felt warmer, tonally, and a bit rom-com–like in its embrace of genre, especially in the way it lands. 

I guess I could call it — well, “broad” is such a bad word — but I’m trying to figure out how to describe it. This is intentionally a more, I guess, commercial film. It’s a more purely comedic film. The Climb took its time a bit more — it was more patient with the comedy, with the storytelling, and with how you experienced the film. And that was by design. We weren’t trying to prove anything; we were just taking you on this sort of unexpected ride.

With this one, it was more like — not “how do we subvert the genre,” because it’s not exactly that — but how do we make our own version of a movie like this? A movie about two couples, partner-swapping, infidelity — a divorce comedy, in a way — but done in our own style.

I’m not one of those people who only wants to make capital-A “Art Films.” Sure, there’s ambition to make things that might play at Cannes and be perceived as artful — and that’s great. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t also want to make stuff that audiences respond to. I don’t look down on comedies or broad comedies — I love them. So for me, making something that’s big and fun and wild and a bit more comedic — something that maybe lets off the gas emotionally at times — that’s totally fine. It’s just one movie. And that’s what made this one exciting.

I don’t know how many people are inside the Venn diagram of smart divorce comedy, art house cinematography and really great dick jokes, but I definitely am. So I hope you’ll keep doing what you’re doing. 

(Laughs) That’s the thing — I don’t know that it is a Venn diagram. It might be. But it also might be the opposite — where you just have to be in one of the circles. Hopefully, if you can capture this or this or this, that’s enough. I don’t know the exact answer, but I think our view was always: it’s not about making something for a niche art house crowd who also likes broad comedy.

It’s more like, let’s make something that feels bigger, more commercial from a comedic standpoint, but that also has an artistic point of view. 

Cool. Sold. We’ve covered pretty much everything I wanted to throw at you, but we should probably talk about your actresses, who are both so funny and excellent. 

We really lucked out — casting two incredible actresses who are wildly funny, but each in a way that felt perfectly tailored to their characters. And we evolved the characters once Dakota and Audrey came on. We worked with them to adjust and refine things — to find specificity and rework certain aspects of the roles to better match their strengths and what they wanted to do with the characters. It was such a blessing to have two distinctly different performers who could bring the characters to life in ways that felt so specific and recognizable. For me, I recognize both of those characters in real life. There’s a real familiarity to them — but they’re also just so funny, and they play it completely straight. That’s the beautiful thing — everyone who came onto this movie understood the tone. No one was winking at the camera. They all understood the sandbox we were playing in—where every character believes their problem is the most important problem in the world, and they’re playing it with complete commitment. There’s nothing funnier than that to me.