“Australia has some great comedy,” says Kyle Marvin. “You guys are doing it right.”
“Yeah,” agrees Marvin’s collaborator, Michael Angelo Corvino. “We were really disappointed not to make it over to the Melbourne Film Festival when The Climb played there.”
The two filmmakers sit side by side, as they often do: co-writers, co-stars, and collaborators whose careers have unfolded in tandem. Their breakout, The Climb (2019), was the sort of debut that festivals dream of – ambitious, off-kilter, rooted in male friendship but shot with an elegance more often reserved for chamber dramas. Thierry Frémaux, artistic director of the Cannes Film Festival, half-joked that he programmed the film because it was about cycling, his personal passion. But audiences knew better, it was a genuine discovery.
Six years later, they are back with Splitsville, another comedy, but one layered with romantic complications and an almost old-fashioned devotion to story craft. If The Climb was a seven-minute short stretched into an epic odyssey of betrayal and endurance, Splitsville feels more like a throwback to the days when a studio comedy could also be formally rigorous – when character and structure were treated as sacred, even as they incorporated elaborate fight scenes and jokes about naming goldfish after popes.
Splitsville, opening across Australia this week, is an “unromantic comedy” that thrusts two married couples into emotional chaos when the seemingly stable marriage between Ashley (played by Adria Arjona) and Carey, played by Marvin, ends abruptly after his wife Ashley confesses infidelity and asks for a divorce. Seeking solace, Carey turns to his best friend Paul (played by Corvino) and Paul’s wife Julie (Dakota Johnson), only to discover their marriage is “open,” a setup that Carey misreads as permission to cross boundaries. What begins as explorations of honesty, freedom, and modern relationship ideals spirals into jealousy, resentment, and wild confrontations.
Sitting down with them after their triumphant Cannes premiere, where the film received a lengthy standing ovation, I found them still processing what it means to make a comedy that Cannes not only accepts but celebrates.
Splitsville is in Australian cinemas from 25 September 2025.
Congratulations on last night. You must be thrilled. It seems like it’s been a long road to getting Splitsville in front of people.
Michael Angelo Corvino: Yeah. I mean, the project came together relatively quickly, but it was a very intense road over the last year to get it here. We’ve been working around the clock.
Obviously Covid got in the way and a few other things, but why has it taken six years since The Climb?
MAC: Well, we’ve made a bunch of stuff since then. Kyle directed a movie (80 for Brady, in 2023). We had Covid, and The Climb didn’t actually release properly because of that – it got pushed and ended up just sort of not releasing in the way it was intended to. Then we had the big strike in Hollywood, which shut us down for about a year. So there’s just been some starts and stops. When the strike lifted, we moved quickly to get this made. We came up with the idea around that time, and it all happened fast.
Can you walk me through that process of developing the idea?
Kyle Marvin: We always start with a kernel of an idea that feels compelling. Then we build outward, but the real work is in the characters. We define them by how they respond to situations. The fun is in applying pressure: what obstacles can we put in their way, and how can those obstacles escalate? Then we weave their arcs together so the pressure builds between them. That’s what excites us most in the writing.
MAC: Sometimes we’ll improvise, sometimes we’ll perform a scene for each other. It’s fluid. One of us might be writing while the other blurts out an idea. It’s about shaking something loose—approaching the script like a sculptor walking around a block of stone, looking at it from every angle. You wait for brilliance to hit and then run as fast as you can before you lose it.
Like naming goldfish after popes?
KM: (laughs) That was Michael.
MAC: Yeah, we were just coming up with funny fish names. Then I threw out “John Paul” and it clicked. Suddenly it was this kid, really smart but getting bad grades, who names all his fish after popes. It felt weird in the right way.
So you don’t role-play the kid, but you put yourselves in his shoes?
MAC: Exactly. You shift perspective. Sometimes you’re writing the kid in service of another character, sometimes you focus on his arc. We’ll do passes from each character’s point of view to make sure nothing feels off.
Kyle: For us, the script is sacred. It has to be tight. We build the foundation, then we weave, condense, chop, and pressure-test.
That respect for the audience’s attention really comes through. So many comedies seem lazy by comparison, happy to be hangout movies or relying a lot on improvisation.
MAC: We just set a high bar. Every choice – on the page, in the cinematography, in the performances – has to have a reason. If the plan is “two cameras and everyone improvises,” we won’t even start the day.
One of the big focuses in the leadup to the release of Splitsville is the casting. How much of the characters were locked before actors came aboard?
MAC: Kyle and I were cast from the beginning – we’re basically playing ourselves. But Dakota was someone we’d wanted to work with, and when she read the script, she was effusive, and it was the same with Adria. It was about creating enough space and time to talk through every moment in the script and rehearse and really find the version of the character that they wanted to play. Both of them were such great collaborators. They brought their own ideas and elevated the script. We always leave room for that, especially if they're coming out as a producer. We leave room for collaboration because if we're misaligned on something it's much better to know that out of the gate than once you're into the movie.
KM: By the time we got to set, we were as prepared as possible. But nothing’s ever locked. You need to pivot when the day changes. Trusting your instincts is key.
So by the time you get to set, it's like very much locked in. Because it seemed like a pretty short shoot, right?
KM: Yeah, 24 days.
MAC: Well, no, nothing's locked in. Moviemaking for me is always about coming in with the best possible plan and then being really able to pivot and to improvise on the day. Adjust in the moment and trust your instincts to know that you understand the story and what you're trying to achieve so well that if you do make a split second decision to pivot or change something, you know, it's not going to have a ripple effect where it destroys the movie.
What lessons did you take from The Climb into Splitsville?
MAC: We’ve been producing films for a long time, so we knew the basics. But we also chase things that scare us. On Splitsville we had shots that could only be done once – like the opening scene of the film. That’s one continuous take and in that scene a car flips over. We had two cars, right? So that's it. Two shots to get the whole thing done. The beginning, all the way through the flip to the end. We really raised the stakes on those.
KM: Raising the stakes makes it interesting. That energy shows on screen.
Was casting yourselves as romantic leads a risk? Did it feel scary?
MAC: Is that scary? I mean, it's unproven, I guess. You're vulnerable. You look at it, you're like, okay, we have to carry the movie in a way. But I trusted Kyle. I knew that he could do it. He's been acting since The Climb and he’s done incredible things, so I felt very comfortable with him and I think less of the burden of the movie was on me. I have some big scenes, but I felt like I knew I wouldn't break the movie. I knew I could make it work and I knew because I had control over the performances in the edit that it was within my framework of control. There's a sense of comfort because it's like, all right, it's on me, but I'll pull it off somehow.
KM: I also think, to toot your horn, that you have a really singular ability to be a potent actor and be empathetic. And I think that's a very hard, very narrow window where you're asking characters to be pretty, you know, potent and have really dynamic scenes and yet show that vulnerability even within the scene itself. That's a hard casting choice regardless. And I think that for me, as a fellow performer, I think that was a no brainer.
MAC: And we knew we could land the comedy, keep things from getting too earnest. We knew we could bring jokes in and that we’d written roles we could deliver on, we can find ways to relieve the tension. Whether the audience was ready to see us or not, we knew that if they got into the movie and we got them on board with the movie, hopefully by the end they would go for the ride and go for the experience because we knew that the characters were written in a sweet spot of roles that we would be good playing.
To me, it felt like a throwback – funny, charismatic leads rather than models-turned-actors.
MAC: Hollywood has a history of non-traditionally handsome stars and people who look like… not everyday people, but they're a bit rougher looking, you know?
Your Billy Crystals.
MAC: Yeah, 100%. In the 70s, it wasn't about being the most beautiful person in the world being on screen. It was like, there's something interesting. This is a character. There's a person there. He's got all flaws on his face and he's got stuff going on, but there's sort of depth behind the eyes. So I don't know, we trusted that there was a heritage of like, people who look somewhat like us being on camera in these roles, and because we were referencing all those movies, we thought this even more reason why we should really lean into this.
Kyle, something struck me as definitely not a flaw was on display during your several scenes of full-frontal nudity. I have to ask, well I don’t have to but… there is a very sizable appendage on show. Is it prosthetic?
MAC and KM simultaneously: No comment.
Perfect answer. (long pause) So, during that six-minute standing ovation, last night, what was going through your heads?
MAC: At first, honestly? “Can this stop?” We’re not trained to process admiration that way. But then you settle into it. You realise it’s their tradition, their way of saying, “I had a great experience.” It feels sincere and beautiful.
KM: Exactly. It’s not about us – it’s about them expressing gratitude. That makes it magical.
One last question: what’s next?
MAC: A bunch of things. We’ve written a couple of scripts, and we're developing a TV show. Hopefully acting in projects we don’t have to write, direct, and produce ourselves.
KM: During the pandemic we wrote as much as possible, so there’s plenty to work on.
MAC: But it’s early. Nothing to announce yet.
Hopefully that’s easier after last night.
MAC: I hope so.