The Roses Review — Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch Thoughtfully, Hilariously Destroy a Marriage

They say that the opposite of love isn’t hate, but indifference.

It makes sense. Both love and hate are intense, and the natural inverse of those emotions would be their absence altogether. There’s genuine power in seeing someone who broke your heart and feeling not ache, but something milder, more passive. However, that doesn’t necessarily make for a compelling film. We want the screaming, the yelling, and the tossing of expensive objects at one’s head. We want passionate clinches and passionate arguments. We want the catharsis of, say, setting fire to a spouse’s ludicrously expensive imported Irish moss sitting atop their ludicrously costly home. 

The Roses Plot

The Roses delivers that, and more, in spades. The film follows the trials and tribulations of Theo and Ivy Rose (Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman), a couple on the cusp of romantic ruination. It’s a long, steady decline, though, spurred by Theo’s architectural career imploding when a spate of terrible weather destroys his passion project. That spat also supercharges Ivy’s initially modest career as a chef, with her seafood restaurant becoming a booming success after a restaurant critic visits to escape the elements.

Once on relatively equal footing, Theo and Ivy see their roles in the marriage change: Theo becomes a stay-at-home dad to their two children, while Ivy becomes a culinary sensation, flying in private jets and franchising her restaurant. They both find themselves struggling with the changes, with minor misunderstandings curdling into catastrophic resentments until, well, they’re burning ludicrously expensive imported Irish moss in revenge.

The Roses Review

As chaotic as setting fire to Gaelic vegetation reads on paper, The Roses succeeds in demonstrating how that (and even worse) behavior doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Director Jay Roach catalogs the decade-plus-long breakdown of the Roses’ marriage in refreshingly mature detail. He lays down the groundwork relatively early, where we start to see the friction points between Theo and Ivy, particularly when it comes to parenting their two children.

They clash ever so slightly over the kids’ nutritional habits, although with a dollop of playfulness and humor to level off the tension. The disagreement may seem like a minor quibble in that context, but it reflects a significant gap in their approaches to parenting. This gap only grows when Theo becomes the primary caregiver with control over their health decisions, which leads to more consequential long-term challenges.

The Roses approaches almost every disagreement in measured, thoughtful ways. Even the beats that lean towards cliché, like Theo’s growing resentment over Ivy’s success, are given room to breathe and find the novelty within them. In Theo’s case, he’s more frustrated that Ivy doesn’t fully appreciate his efforts as a stay-at-home dad. (It’s worth noting that the film doesn’t explicitly challenge the misogyny behind that thinking.)

As for Ivy, we see a woman relishing in success after years of modest aims but also yearning for the connection to her children she once had, which Theo has effectively overwritten. Despite these philosophical differences and nicks at their respective egos, neither Theo nor Ivy actively tries to sabotage the other, at first. We see them proactively work at solving their gaps in communication or tempering their urge to be petty and small at the other’s expense. 

(“Don’t be a dick,” Theo mutters to himself in an airplane toilet; “Just apologize,” Ivy says in the airplane toilet home.) 

Their genuine effort to resolve their frustrations, with the same dry rapport and genuine affection that brought them together, only makes their dissolution all the more satisfying. The dinner party scene is a stunning battle of bitter wits and petulance, where Theo and Ivy’s empty nest has turned their simmering tensions into a rapid, scalding boil. The jokes and jabs get progressively meaner and funnier, making you feel slightly bad for laughing at either of their expenses. By the time the cake is cleaned off the table and the guests are gone, you can’t imagine how much worse it can get. 

Of course it does, in expected and unexpected ways. Theo officially calls time on their marriage after rescuing a beached whale. It sounds ridiculous even as I write that sentence, but Roach plays the scene straight, leading Theo to admit that he feels no joy in their marriage, the same joy they relied on at their lowest points. It’s a gut-wrenching admission, the kind that they probably shouldn’t come back from.

What follows Theo’s whale-assisted epiphany is quite possibly the most brutal divorce negotiations in recent film history, where the couple goes to extremes to retain ownership of the house that Theo built and Ivy financed (to keep Theo occupied). It’s histrionic, destructive, riotous, and also a step over the top, especially after Theo’s brutally honest admission. Perhaps they were always headed to their entertaining, catastrophic end, but it makes you wonder if Roach should’ve flipped the sequence of events.

The Roses is Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman’s first film together, but you wouldn’t know it watching them. Their chemistry is effortless, as if they’re at least on their sixth film and can have expert experience navigating each other’s rhythms and quirks. Their rapport is vital to making what Roach asks of them, from a pre-first-date hookup in a kitchen refrigerator to chucking knives and bullets at one another, work successfully.

They ground the Roses’s increasingly insane antics in the tangible pain and fear that the person they chose to spend their lives with doesn’t see them anymore. For Colman, that means leaning into her ability to silently convey devastating vulnerability amidst silly circumstances (for which she won the Oscar for The Favourite). Cumberbatch is equally effective, bringing unexpected pathos to Theo’s realization that the marriage is over in one of the best scenes of his career to date.

Is The Roses Worth Watching?

Even though moss is burned, cakes are smashed, and gunshots ring throughout an overdesigned home, The Roses is a decidedly adult affair. While there are some contrivances, the film focuses on the circumstances that could drive emotionally intelligent people to the brink of sanity. Ultimately, it finds that rational people do not destroy each other’s lives if there is still some emotional investment. Love and hate share the same side of the coin, unapologetically complicated, messy, and exhilarating. 

When done right, as The Roses does, it almost makes for a great film.

The Roses hits theaters on August 29.

The Roses Review — Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch Thoughtfully, Hilariously Destroy a Marriage

FW Score

9

Spectacular

Brandon Lewis

Review scoring

The Roses is a decidedly adult affair, focusing on the circumstances that could drive emotionally intelligent people to the brink of sanity with wickedly dry humor and emotional richness.