“But you are still a failure. Women don’t like that.” Ouch. No wonder Theo needs to take his wife, Ivy, away for the weekend to try to prove himself. The coast-to-coast trip across the U.S. isn’t a success though. When he gets drunk in the business class cabin on the airplane and the police are called to meet the flight after touchdown, her reaction is, “Thank God. Have you got a taser?” In New York it’s her turn to get drunk; but an apology on the flight back doesn’t work either. “Is that a sorry,” he asks. “Yes,” she replies, “And also a philosophical musing.” As things disintegrate further, they cannot travel together at all. “I have to go somewhere where you are not talking,” she tells him.
This is the kind of to-and-fro which builds the energetic film, “The Roses” (Searchlight Pictures), showing now at the Montrose Playhouse. When you are moneyed and host flashy parties and your friends ask, “How’s married life,” and the best you can reply is “Um…fine,” the relationship is floundering. “Everyone seems to think…” she says, “…we hate each other,” he replies. Of course we know that the film is a comedy about how their marriage ends up in divorce proceedings; that much was divulged in the trailer. But a mostly well-judged screenplay, photogenic locations and smartly-cast secondary roles add enough secret sauce for the film to over-deliver on its promise.
Theo, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, is fired from his job as an architect after an unpopular building of his—with a rather childish sail on its roof—collapses during a violent thunderstorm on opening night. “I wanted it to have movement,” he says. “Just not for it to … set sail!” The V.I.P. guests are—of course!—recording the whole thing on their smartphones, and a quick-witted geek creates a nifty meme combining Theo’s words with the fateful image. As a stand-in for what’s about to happen to his marriage, the idea’s not bad; Theo considers it entertaining enough to watch on repeat. As he moves from panic attacks to house husband, it is only much later that Ivy, played by Olivia Coleman, asks him, “Can you get a job,” and then sarcastically reminds him that he is “addicted to public adoration.” But as a ruse to try to patch things up between them, and after she becomes wildly wealthy from her life as a celebrity chef, he designs a “dream” home overlooking the sea for them both. “What about showing the world you’re a genius,” she suggests.
The film says as much about the futile attachment to buildings as it does about marriage. “The building was everything to me,” Theo says of the one that collapsed, raising the obvious question about his wife and two children. “Building my genius, building my career.” He is obsessed with the idea that he is irreplaceable, a misunderstood genius, a hero. Along the way he has become unbearably pious—a quality he uses to turn their two children into pro-athletes, basking in the sunlight of their talents. Ivy’s star waxes while Theo’s wanes and she is on hand to jest mercilessly: the sail-building is “soon to be the eighth wonder of the world,” for instance. As his career plummets, he has to watch Ivy travel around the U.S. celebrity cheffing and opening more and more restaurants (imaginatively called “We’ve got crabs”). No doubt he regrets burning bridges with his boss, who overheard him sarcastically describing their joint work as “seven hundred featureless boxes.” “I detect a note of bitterness,” his boss says. And the fact that their divorce is all about who gets the house, designed by him but paid for by her, made me think that the ever-present buildings (both real and metaphorical) are a substantial component of why “The Roses” packs such a punch.
Two posh British people living amongst Americans provides a fertile ground for traditional Englishman-in-New-York humour too. One of Theo’s neighbours comes on to him; “I’m still falling for that little accent.” And earlier on, when the couple are—just about—on the same side, they are invited for a nice day out to a gun-shooting range and much hay is made out of the Americans’ absurd belief that they are there to protest; “I am anti-gun. I am here ironically.” (Of course they didn’t need to go at all—a bowling alley would have done just fine.)
True, the language in “The Roses” can be over-crude—those who don’t like graphic swearing would be better to stay away. The material is designed to be adult in nature and is not suitable for children. And sometimes the dialog is too fast—the gags would have landed more consistently if the actors had delivered their lines at three-quarters of the speed.
The so-called “smart” systems of the new house are run by HAL, an AI-assistant—presumably named after the sentient computer in “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968). The last thirty minutes reminded my why one of my own obsessions is to scrupulously avoid anything “smart” in my house in Montrose. There is also one of those bookshelves that talking heads on Sky News are very fond of posing with while they speak. The twenty-eight-thousand-dollar Irish moss on the roof apparently burns very well, as do those books. While the coastline around Mendocino, California (where “Murder, She Wrote” (1984-1996) was filmed) is beautiful, so is that around Montrose, Scotland. I occasionally pack a few sandwiches and wander along the beach to watch the little birds and while away a day, no buildings in sight.
“That’s why the English invented repressing their feelings,” Ivy remarks at one point. This is irony too—there’s no repressing of anything at all in “The Roses.” One of the many excellent small parts is the role of the Fool. ”You are about to leave an indelible mark on the world,” the neighbour says to Theo. “I heard that on a podcast or something.”
Adam Poole
31st August 2025
If you are interested in viewing this screening, please book your tickets here
