Director Michael Angelo Covino and his best friend Kyle Marvin combined to produce this intriguing farce about two best friends called Mike and Kyle.
You have to wonder if the film is their way of dealing with the ups and downs of a lifelong friendship.
We meet the pair on a bike ride in the south of France, with the unfit easy-going Kyle panting to keep pace with the irritatingly athletic Mike.
As they near the top of a long mountain climb Mike casually remarks that he has slept with the the woman that Kyle is about to marry.
“I’m going to kill you,” gasps Kyle, as he struggles vainly to catch up with his callous mate.
It’s the first of a series of devastating events which should be enough to destroy the friendship forever.
Why does the ever-tolerant Kyle put up with the selfish, narcissistic Mike, who crashes through life with little thought for the effect of his appalling behaviour on others?
Covino and Marvin wrote the script together and gave telling performances as their namesake characters.
“The script simply amplified elements of our personalities, and things that we saw in each other,” says Marvin.
This is the first feature film for Covino, who is better known as a producer and actor.
He worked with the talented cinematographer Zach Kuperstein, with some memorable extended takes, notably the opening hill-climbing sequence.
The Climb is structured as a series of seven vignettes which gradually make up the storyline, each one set in a different place, over the course of a year or so.
Some of the vignettes are slapstick farcical, others poignantly wistful.
Through it all the couple’s friendship endures, even stronger than their romantic entanglements.
The Climb opens at Luna Leederville on Thursday, October 29.
Watch the trailer…
