Dying on the vine: the Roses wither in this marriage comedy

Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch come out swinging in The Roses, but farce and sincerity always seem to make awkward bedfellows. By Sam Spiller

- By Sam Spiller

There are two things everyone needs a bit of in life: romance and black comedy. Whether the two are a great combination, or one should lead into the other, is open to debate.

New darkly comic film The Roses triggers this discussion, and honestly, by the end it’s unclear which side comes out on top in this wobbly marriage.

A loose adaptation of the 1981 novel The War of the Roses by Warren Adler, and a remake of Danny DeVito's 1989 film adaptation, starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner, The Roses follows Theo and Ivy Rose (played by Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman), a couple with two children and a decade’s worth of happy matrimony.

Things start to unravel, though, as Theo's career as an architect comes crashing down, while Ivy’s career as a chef starts heating up — prompting a domestic role reversal, and exposing the cracks in what many would declare an ideal coupling.

Very quickly, minor annoyances and microaggressions mutate into a series of unfortunate, distressing events as the Roses realise that 10 years of marriage has given way to vicious resentment. It’s a force aggravated by the attitudes of their friends, the failure of family and a mutually held belief that one would have been so much better off without the other.

As a black comedy, The Roses is frustratingly flawed.