‘The Climb': Euro-Inspired Indie is as Shallow as its Characters [Review]

Here’s a clever indie comedy, maybe a bit too clever for its own good, dealing with an utterly dysfunctional bromance. “The Climb” is directed in a highly stylized fashion by Michael Angelo Covino, who also co-wrote the screenplay and stars alongside Kyle Marvin.

The film commences with two friends on a biking trip in the French countryside, pumping their way up a steep hillside, only for the dapper Mike (Covino) to inform surly Kyle (Marvin) that he slept with his fiancee. Multiple times. It turns out the decision to break the news to him in the middle of a biking vacation was not ill-timed. “I’m going to kill you!” a short-winded Kyle angrily replies. “I know, that’s why I told you on a hill,” says Mike.

And thus begins Covino’s tumultuously indie, via a lengthy single take opener, smoothly shot by cinematographer Zach Kuperstein. From there, the film time-jumps through the years, depicting the bumpy relationship between these two men, as well as their girlfriends and familial dysfunctions, all of which dramatically change with every time-jump. The story is told through a series of 7 vignettes, and is shot via single takes. The more the film goes forward in time, the darker the comedy gets. All seven episodes are hinted at as being the only other times Mike and Kyle met since the opening bike trip.

We learn that Mike, now an impulse-free alcoholic, has become a burden to those closest to him, whereas Kyle is the total opposite, an edgeless weakling without an ounce of self-confidence. They bump into each other at the aforementioned fiancee’s funeral; Mike married her instead, and he's now a grieving widower. There’s also a disastrous Christmas dinner with Kyle's family, where he shows up inebriated and learns that Kyle is newly engaged to Marissa (Gayle Rankin). I can’t fail to mention a disastrous ski trip Marissa and Kyle decide to take Mike on, which ends with him trying his best to break them up. And so on it goes.

Through it all, Covino’s direction shines; here is a filmmaker attuned and confident in his abilities behind the camera. His smooth, almost glacially-composed shots are filled with fearless energy and assured framing. The problem is that, despite Covino’s fresh set of cinematic eyes, his film lacks the substance needed to make it more than just an admirable effort, one that quickly fades from your memory just mere moments after it’s concluded. The emotional core of the film — the sustaining brotherhood between Kyle and Mike in spite of everything that’s happened — is empty, riddled with a lack of humanism, and an abundance of shallowness. It’s incredibly hard to get on-board with a movie that asks you to cheer for two dopey and unlikeable men. [C+]