The anatomy of a marriage disintegrating into a sea of vitriol and two-way psychological torture is undeniably grim subject matter, a highwire act for a filmmaker who, if the job’s done properly and honestly, leaves little room for the audience to root for either protagonist.
Both Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch have entries on their CVs where a film role has required them to be unsavoury types, yet here director Jay Roach seems to begin the tale with a Year Zero premise of characters who are charming and quick-witted, a filmic reflection of the stars’ familiar personalities from chat shows and awards ceremonies.
Theo and Ivy Rose are well-to-do Brits abroad, he a globally renowned architect, she a skilled chef with a radically creative streak; however, when a freak storm destroys one of the former’s buildings, leaving his reputation in tatters, the latter steps up to be the chief breadwinner.
A mutual decision to split up leads to the inevitable who-gets-what in the divorce settlement, centred largely on the luxury California cliffside house Theo designed and built but which Ivy paid for.
It’s a fun ride, admittedly, if lacking the venom that might have given it the edge of the earlier version of Warren Adler’s novel, filmed under its full title The War of the Roses in 1989, in which Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner were genuinely awful to each other.
Instead, we have a couple who are initially presented as all-round good eggs and who never quite manage to shake the image off; at times Colman’s plummy, sing-song Englishness is so off the scale it’s as if she’s overdosed on Joyce Grenfell pills.
View oEmbed on the source websiteAs the Roses’ closest couple friends, they’ve presumably been shoehorned into proceedings to illustrate a different type of dysfunctional marriage that’s found a way to thrive – McKinnon does admirably well, considering how little’s on the page.
But for all the star power and talent of those names a little lower on the credits roll, The Roses is essentially a two-hander, designed around the notion of nice people forced into dirty tricks and dastardly deeds.
This is not a bad film, by any means, it’s just frustratingly toothless when it should be leaving visible bite marks; a black comedy that’s nowhere near black enough.
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