95 minutes, opens on Sept 4★★★☆☆

The story: Ten idyllic years and two children after their meet-cute at a London restaurant kitchen, British spouses Theo (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Ivy Rose (Olivia Colman) move to the United States and start hating each other.

Theo in The Roses is a starchitect, whose museum showpiece on the Northern California coast collapses in a freak storm along with his career.

The same superstorm reroutes a food critic to Ivy’s seaside crab shack.

In an overnight reversal of fortunes, Ivy becomes a celebrity chef and Theo a humiliating meme.

The frustrated, unemployable husband is left at home to raise, feed and delouse the kids, while his wife jet-sets around her expanding business empire as the family’s breadwinner.

Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner were at least spared the professional jealousies and gender power shifts in The War Of The Roses (1989).

This 21st-century update of the marital black comedy based on Warren Adler’s 1981 bestseller is directed by Jay Roach (Austin Powers, 1997 to 2002; Meet The Parents, 2000 to 2004). It is relatable, how the resentments build into ugly divorce.

The supporting ensemble has Andy Samberg as Theo’s lawyer and a hyper-sexualised Kate McKinnon slobbering all over him.

Cumberbatch’s and Colman’s dual star power and wit class up the farce, the two real-life long-time friends deftly slinging vitriol and profane insults that are at once savagely funny and very sad.

The couple’s sarcasm is like their shared secret language. There is still love, commingled in the loathing, and the Americans can never tell if they are merely flirting.

“You’re so dry,” one marvels.

“Only when my husband looks at me” is Ivy’s reply.