Warning: potential spoilers ahead.
What’s a house worth when love turns to war? In director Jay Roach’s 2025 film The Roses, in theaters today, Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman star as Theo (an architect) and Ivy Rose (a chef), a British couple whose painstakingly crafted glass-walled paradise becomes both a prize and a war zone as their relationship spirals into dark—and often hilarious—hostility. Adapted by screenwriter Tony McNamara, the film is based on the classic novel, The War of the Roses, and 1989 movie by the same name, though with some updates to the setting and symbolism for a modern audience.
In the film, Theo, a once-successful architect, is humiliated when his major public project collapses. Meanwhile, Ivy’s seafood restaurant, We’ve Got Crabs, becomes an unexpected hit, sending her career skyward. Hoping to comfort her husband and rekindle their partnership, she uses her new earnings to buy him a dramatic plot of land on the Northern California coast, encouraging Theo to design and build what is meant to be their dream home and a fresh start for their family. Instead of bridging the growing gap between them, the project only magnifies it.
The house at the heart of the couple’s unraveling is a marvel of contemporary Scandinavian design dreamed up from scratch by production designer Mark Ricker and constructed on a soundstage. This allowed Ricker and his team the control they needed to craft—and later destroy—every dramatic detail. “It needed to be a house that two people would want to kill each other over,” he says.
More than a backdrop, the home is a character in its own right: a “playground” for the warring spouses, filled with visual metaphors for brokenness, ambition, and intimacy. Ricker, who has collaborated with Roach on previous films like Trumbo (2015), All the Way (2016), and Bombshell (2019), drew inspiration from the Danish concept of hygge—an environment that represents the ultimate in coziness and warmth. “Even though we knew that they were going to be going after each other over it,” he says, “the whole point was to introduce details that would make it a place that everybody would fall in love with.”
The result features clean lines, expansive glass walls, and organic shapes that seem to emerge from the clifftop landscape. “I had a bit of license to make it almost a cliche of the most fabulous house,” Ricker says. The geometric forms create what he describes as “a playground for these two characters to just be able to go up and down and through things,” with the architecture itself suggesting the fractures that will eventually tear the couple apart.
The main living area of the Roses’ home.
The interiors of this home, too, reveal as much about Theo and Ivy’s relationship dynamics as any dialogue. Working with set decorator Jude Farr, Ricker made deliberate choices about how personal belongings would transition from the couple’s original family home to their dream house. “I wanted to feel that there was a sense of her kitchenware; a charm that still filled those open cabinets in the kitchen,” he says.
But the new house ultimately reflects Theo’s singular vision rather than a collaborative effort. “By the time he was building this house, it was all Theo,” Ricker explains. “[Ivy] was busy with her [restaurant]—she’s distracted. And so it was not a love project between the two of them.” This imbalance becomes crucial to understanding how their relationship deteriorates—the house that was meant to represent their shared success instead becomes a monument to Theo’s ambitions.
Throughout the Roses’ home are visual references to fragments.
Perhaps the most challenging aspect of Ricker’s work was preparing for the house’s ultimate destruction during the film’s climactic shootout. Every breakable element required multiple versions—the elaborate Italian chandelier was recreated three times in candy glass, cabinet doors were duplicated to show realistic bullet damage, and even the smallest props needed destructible doubles.
“You have to plan everything,” Ricker explains. “We had multiple pillows with the feathers that flew out. We had multiple cabinet doors that got bullet holes. We had fake oranges and fake knives and multiple versions of everything.” The process required careful choreography to maintain the house’s glass walls—crucial for the film’s ending—while allowing for spectacular destruction elsewhere.
“You have to plan everything,” Ricker says.
The house Ricker ended up creating is a meditation on how our spaces reflect our relationships, and ultimately, a reminder that even the most beautiful homes can become battlegrounds when love turns to war.
As Ricker watched his architectural creation come to life on screen, knowing it would soon be dramatically destroyed, he found unexpected satisfaction in the process: “I thought it was amusing that we then got to mess it all up.”
Julia Cancilla is the engagement editor (and resident witch) at ELLE Decor, where she oversees the brand’s social media platforms and writes the monthly ELLE Decoroscope column. She covers design trends, pop culture, and lifestyle through storytelling to explore how our homes reflect who we are. Her work has also appeared in Inked magazine, House Beautiful, Marie Claire, and more.