Jay Roach | 2hr 1min
Even beyond its darkened skies and heavy rains, the storm that sweeps across Northern California in The Roses feels like the work of some trickster god, setting a pair of lovers on inverse paths. For Theo, his reputation as an architect is staked on the bold, nautical design of a new maritime museum, though in retrospect the decorative sails do not seem so great an idea when powerful winds begin tearing it apart. At the exact same moment, Ivy’s budding restaurant We’ve Got Crabs becomes an unexpected refuge for drivers escaping the downpour, including one particularly renowned food critic who lifts it into the spotlight.
With Theo’s career set back and Ivy’s booming, this dejected husband decides to take on the responsibilities of a stay-at-home dad. As satisfied as he is in this role though, still he yearns for creative purpose, while Ivy conversely mourns the fading maternal intimacy that comes with professional success. No one can have it all in Jay Roach’s darkly funny autopsy of a failing marriage, amusingly picking apart the emotional contradictions that drive lovers to sabotage the very life they built together. It may be happenstance which set them on diverging trajectories, yet the combustible mixture of bitterness and ego that threatens to ignite full-blown war is purely their own.
Rather than directly remaking the 1989 black comedy The War of the Roses, screenwriter Tony McNamara approaches the source material through reinvention, framing Theo and Ivy as flawed lovers in place of irredeemable narcissists. Given his background working with Yorgos Lanthimos on The Favourite and Poor Things, it is no surprise that his dark sense of humour translates so well to this feud, needling the institution of marriage with a smirk and a scalpel. Even in Theo and Ivy’s more amiable moments, his dialogue delivers a biting wit, revealing the unusual love language upon which they have built years of mutual respect and playful banter. Nevertheless, it is through those barbs wrapped in a wry smile that their verbal acuity is unleashed in full force, exposing a mutual, damning deficiency – neither truly knows any other way to communicate.
The Roses is evidently far more a showcase for McNamara’s crackling writing than Roach’s bland visual direction, often holding back the operatic heights of its premise, yet the dinner party which builds Theo and Ivy’s contempt to a publicly humiliating climax may be the sole exception here. Staging the couple on either ends of a long dining table, the space in between becomes a tennis court, lined with confused spectators and littered with the sharp volley of petty jabs. The theatrical escalation distinctly echoes Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, though as London expats living in America, there is also a culture gap here that comically keeps their guests from grasping the British art of passive-aggressive sparring.
The ensemble that Roach assembles around Theo and Ivy provides a distinctive contrast to their lively sense of humour, especially with Allison Janney disarming even the sharpest tongues as a brutal divorce lawyer. It is Andy Samberg though who is the strongest supporting actor here, toning down his usually exuberant screen presence to illustrate another broken marriage that, unlike our central couple, has merely fallen into passionless resignation. Visiting their new house and admiring the view, he casually compliments it as “a cool place to suicide from,” morbidly betraying a defeatism that neither Theo nor Ivy would ever submit to.
It is the fire in their competition which makes The Roses such a deliciously grim spectacle after all, augmented by the volatile chemistry between Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman’s crackling performances. As classically trained actors, they know their way around a cutting turn of phrase, wielded like daggers until real weapons take their place. The luxurious home that Theo lovingly designed becomes the central point of contention in their breakup, as well as a battlefield for their increasingly absurd and savage acts of vengeance. It’s scorched earth in this domestic war, dragging their careers into the crossfire of reputational ruin, and even placing each other’s lives on the line to claim ownership of the property they’re tearing apart.
If one reaches this point of The Roses and wonders whether Theo and Ivy love each other or whether they should get divorced, they are missing the point. In this hilariously twisted case, both may very well be true at once, ironically setting their undeniable bond against their capability for destruction. In one of the funniest punchlines to end a film in recent years too, Roach and McNamara fully realise the tragic, dramatic irony of this toxic relationship, culminating in a tender obliviousness that turns the film’s final joke on them. We have no doubt about what’s coming, even if they never see it themselves – but is that not the most fitting fate for lovers who mistake elegant, calculated cruelty for connection?
The Roses is currently playing in theatres.
