Dakota Johnson seems to love messy love triangles almost as much as she (at least claimed to) love limes. The Materialistsactor has found herself in her second complicated love shape film of the year, although Splitsville‘s entanglementwould be more accurately described as a love square or even, at times, a love hexagon. Perhaps even a love dodecahedron.
Before hitting play on the new trailer, ask yourself this: if your spouse asked for a divorce and admitted to multiple counts of infidelity, what would you do? If your answer is “get out of the car and sort of silently roll down a hill,” then Splitsville is probably for you.
If your follow-up response is “get yourself a little too involved in your friends’ open marriage,” well then Splitsville is definitely for you. The film’s official synopsis reads as follows: “After Ashley (Adria Arjona) asks for a divorce, good-natured Carey (Kyle Marvin) runs to his friends, Julie (Johnson) and Paul (Michael Angelo Covino), for support. He’s shocked to discover that the secret to their happiness is an open marriage, that is until Carey crosses the line and throws all of their relationships into chaos.”
The raunchy comedy, which originally premiered last month at Cannes, serves as the sophomore feature for writing duo Covino and Marvin. Their previous project, another relationship comedy called The Climb, premiered at Cannes in 2019.
“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,” Covino told The Hollywood Reporter. “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.” The characters in this story seem to live by a similar code; if any of them had asked their partners for a little more permission before acting, there probably wouldn’t be a movie at all.
Luckily, that didn’t happen. Splitsville premieres in select theaters August 22, before rolling out nationwide September 5.