The Roses reimagines The War of the Roses as a portrait of a marriage that remains loving even as arguments intensify. Olivia Colman plays Ivy, a chef, and Benedict Cumberbatch plays Theo, an architect; they marry, have twins, and relocate to coastal California. Career pressures and a stormy night trigger mounting resentments as Ivy’s restaurant falters and Theo pursues a museum project. Most of the film follows cycles of quarrel and reconciliation, emphasizing familiar dynamics of middle-aged, affluent couples. The film grows darker only near the end and often avoids the full bitterness of the original.
The decision to call the new adaptation of the Warren Adler novel The War of the Roses simply The Roses is fitting. Where that novel, and its 1989 film adaptation starring Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas, are about a divorce steeped in hatred, the new film, starring Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch, is about a marriage that is loving underneath it all, even as it grows combative. And that change, while it perhaps makes the story more pleasing and human, saps it of its bite.
Here, Colman plays Ivy, a chef who meets Theo (Cumberbatch), an architect who wanders into the kitchen while she's working. They have instant chemistry, and before you know it, they have relocated to the coast of California and are married with young twins. He is working to design a new museum, and she opens a seafood restaurant that struggles to attract customers. A stormy night shifts their fortunes, and resentments start to grow.
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