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Never underestimate the sheer pleasure of hearing Olivia Colman say the C-word.
Yes, that C-word, and while it’s universally acknowledged that the term means something far more colloquial and congenial in the United Kingdom than it does on these shores, the British actor makes it sound as obscene as humanly possible. When she utters it through a smile, the epithet somehow seems even worse. (This is admittedly not the first time we’ve praised her ability to turn offensive nouns into something rhapsodical, and it probably won’t be the last.) Colman only drops profanity’s crown jewel a few times in The Roses. But this second adaptation of Warren Adler’s 1981 novel The War of the Roses — and by extension, a remake-slash-update of the vicious 1989 Kathleen Turner-Michael Douglas comedy of the same name — sees her let one loose early on, as a sort of sweary amuse-bouche.
We meet the Roses, Theo (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Ivy (Colman), in the middle of a couples-counseling session. They’ve been given an assignment: Each must write 10 things they like about the other. Theo contributes that “I’d rather live with her than a wolf.” Ivy counters with, “He has arms.” (She’d just seen a documentary about a man with no arms and his partner seemed to be quite put out because of it, so at least her husband has that going for him.) The savage back and forth finally hits a crescendo with Ivy’s final choice for a “positive” attribute regarding Theo, which is simply her pleasantly calling him the C-word. The therapist looks as if she’s just been slapped. As for Theo? He laughs uproariously. He couldn’t be prouder of his spiteful spouse, and vice versa.
The fact that any remaining mutual admiration is fueled by mutual animosity is thus introduced right up front, and the movie wastes zero time setting out the rules of engagement for what will soon become take-no-prisoners warfare between the Roses. Everything above the belt is fair game, but points are doubled when the blows land below it. Verbal jabs, the more eloquent and vulgar the better, are highly encouraged. Everyone from their offspring to co-workers to hapless counselors are reduced to spectators. Collateral damage should be kept to a minimum unless it’s a dinner party, then all bets are off. And dear god, if you’re going to attempt another take on a comedy that’s already steeped in sadism, cast Cumberbatch and Colman as your leads. Nasty, British, and short on pity is exactly the combination this type of movie requires.
They weren’t always so co-dependently toxic, of course. Once upon a time, Theo and Ivy had a meet-cute at the London restaurant where she worked as an up-and-coming chef. After Ivy announces she’s moving to America to make it in the culinary scene — and Theo impulsively declares he’ll join her — they have sex in a walk-in freezer, as one does after such monumental life decisions. Ten years later, the Roses are married with two children and living in Mendocino, California. He’s an architect who’s landed a plum gig designing a maritime museum. She cooks extraordinary meals for three people at a time, harboring only a smidge of bitterness about “a dream that dies in the cruelty of family life.” That’s just one of the movie’s casually tossed-off lines infused with corrosive poetry. There will be dozens upon dozens of others.
To say that Ivy’s ambitions have quietly been smothered into modesty isn’t quite accurate, because that would be assuming any desire she has to “make it big” still qualifies as a recognizable ambition. She seems happy just to make those around her happy. Still, Theo feels like his wife’s gifts are wasted on them and them alone, so they arrange for her to take over a quaint little roadside cooking shack. Ivy relishes the opportunity to serve crabs to the occasional local or two three nights a week. Then a freak storm causes an accident that ends his career as a design genius and kickstarts her career as a beloved celebrity chef. Theo raises the kids and turns their daughter, Hattie (Hala Finley), and son, Roy (Wells Rappaport), into Olympic-level athletes. He seethes about his stay-at-home-dad status while she sips champagne on private jets with David Chang. She resents him for resenting her newfound happiness, while feeling guilty about not being there for the kids. Remember the love and hate scene in The Night of the Hunter? In this case, you shouldn’t put your money down on love once the screaming starts.
There are plenty of supporting players with clockwork comic timing milling about the margins, from the SNL double act of Andy Samberg and Kate McKinnon as Theo’s attorney and his wife (though her horny agent of chaos seems to be dropping by from an entirely different, far more dissonant movie) to Jamie Demetriou and Zoë Chao as the couple’s fellow architect friends to Doctor Who‘s Ncuti Gatwa and Sunita Mani as Ivy’s restaurant employees. Allison Janney shows up for a single scene as Ivy’s divorce lawyer and quickly tucks it away in the pocket of her tailored suit. Director Jay Roach may be the sort of modern journeyman filmmaker whose distinguishing touch is leaving no personal touch at all; you’d be hard-pressed to find anything connecting the first Austin Powers movie, the sports-underdog parable Mystery, Alaska and such torn-from-the-headlines dramas as Game Change and Bombshell other than his name in the credits. But he loves actors, and loves giving them a lot of business to conduct from the sidelines. Everybody gets at least a few zingers to fire off.
Anyone with eyes and ears, however, can tell that The Roses is primarily a three-person endeavor. Sherlock fanatics may recall that Cumberbatch’s interpretation of Baker Street’s greatest sleuth was blessed with hints of wicked humor sublimated under those manic, elementary deductions. That’s brought to the forefront here, and you feel like he’s relishing the chance to not be dead serious or Doctor Strange for a change. The more uptight Theo gets, the looser Benedict’s performance appears, and his facility for physical comedy gets a workout. No one needs to convince a soul that Colman is one of the single best reasons to keep watching movies and TV today, and that her talent for lacing a twinkle with high degrees of thallium is damn near peerless. The whole thing is pure Advanced Screen Chemistry 108, and being an audience to these two hammering away at each other with such complete ferocity and verbal dexterity is a joy.
Which brings us to the real star of The Roses. Australian playwright Tony McNamara has turned his side hustle as a screenwriter into a blessing for Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor Things, The Favourite), and viewers of The Great, his bawdy historical farce for Hulu, can attest to his love of layered, lacerating insults. It’s impossible to underestimate what he brings to the table here. Any argument that one doesn’t need a new spin on the Douglas-Turner black comedy is rendered more or less moot by the way he sets up Cumberbatch and Colman with such gleefully profane, razor-sharp barbs. No one else writes with such wounding, barbed wit. Whether you think he’s softened the endgame of the novel and the 1989 version or managed to make it even darker is subjective, though we’d lean towards the “darker” vote. Either way, it’s a view on love always meaning to have to say sorry — and adding in dizzying variations on F-bombs and a C-word or two for good measure — that, by any stretch, will leave you feeling extremely thorny.
