Hollywood has given us a bottomless supply of buddy comedies, those odes to homosocial (but heterosexual!) bonding whose irreverent setups almost always culminate in sentimental punchlines about the permanence of male friendship. Arguably, the world doesn’t need another film that speaks to the perseverance of the bond between two men through years marked by obstacles of various magnitudes. Michael Angelo Covino’s parched-dry comedy The Climb, though, injects some distinctly European formalism and some deep irony into its familiar story of a well-meaning man-child whose life is perpetually beset by the outrageous intrusions of his fuck-up of a best friend.
The BFFs in question are Kyle and Mike, played, respectively, by Kyle Marvin and Covino, who also co-wrote the screenplay together, based on their 2018 short of the same name. That short’s entire scenario comprises the opening scene of this tale of friendship gone awry. While the two are pedaling their way up a mountain in the French countryside, Mike confesses to Kyle that he’s been sleeping with the former’s fiancé, Ava (Judith Godrèche). “If I catch you, I’m going to fucking kill you,” the out-of-shape Kyle gasps in response, to which the cycling enthusiast Mike casually responds, “I know, that’s why I waited for the hill.”
Covino shoots the entirety of the approximately eight-minute scene in a single shot, the camera tracking backward ahead of Kyle and Mike as their friendship effectively ends against the backdrop of an immense French mountainside. This literally distanced perspective on the characters will be reinforced by the other “oners” that make up much of The Climb’s subsequent chapters, each announced by a simple black title card. And sometimes scenes appear to be shot in ways intended to playfully frustrate the audience, as in the chapter set at Kyle’s family’s Christmas party, during which the camera only offers us a view of the awkward reunion between Kyle and a now slovenly, alcoholic Mike from outside the house.
Though the ebbs and flows of this friendship propel the narrative, Covino often lets the ambulant camera divorce itself from his characters—ending one scene with a choral spiritual performed by the union grave-diggers at a cemetery, and opening another set inside a ski lodge with an anomalous group of ski dancers performing in slow motion. Later, during a wedding, the camera abruptly leaves the ongoing ceremony, traveling backward to wait patiently outside the church for the disastrous appearance from Mike that the audience has come to expect. The incessant continuity of the perspective produces tension between form and content, the lack of cutting conflicting with the constant interpersonal schisms depicted.
Though Kyle has less of a penchant for wanton self-destruction, both men are deflated thirtysomethings severely lacking the ability to make good decisions. Covino and Marvin adopt similarly slouchy body comportments, heads drooped in pathetic deference to a world that’s defeated their characters. Before long, Kyle has a new fiancé, his high school sweetheart Marissa (Gayle Rankin), whom he values both for the way her assertiveness serves as a corrective to his indecision and for the comfort of her familiarity. Irrespective of the obvious flaws in their relationship, Kyle’s family also holds on to a vaguely grounded two-decade-old dislike for Marissa, and his mother (Talia Balsam) manipulates the emotionally oblivious Mike into thinking the best way of being Kyle’s friend is to once again break up his engagement.
One can imagine how the scene in which Kyle’s groomsmen stage a kidnapping in order to ferry him to his bachelor party, with a few tweaks, could fit into the Todd Phillips oeuvre, but a droll script and subdued performances ensure that The Climb is more than just another Hangover. The film, though it concerns an enduring relationship that Kyle plainly describes as “toxic” during one of their many BFF break-ups, doesn’t sacralize the bromance. Its reliance on formal techniques that are designed to be noticed—the detached camera, the chapter headings, the incessant ’60s French pop that crops up on the soundtrack—may open it to charges of pretentiousness, but such devices make for a film that slides seamlessly between empathizing with its clueless bros and making them objects of unsparing derision.
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