Episodios

  • Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 57: iZombie

    Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 57: iZombie
    Aug 16 2025
    Yet another cop drama with non-monogamous people involved in a murder? Can Hollywood actually show ethical non-monogamy or is it just another excuse to punish "deviants"? Joreth reviews the Netflix show, iZombie, to find out. www.PolyishMovieReviews.com That was a surprisingly hopeful episode. Well, I mean, the whole series has a hopeful tone, given the subject matter and the impossible situations it spirals into. But I was still surprised by this one. iZombie is a quirky little show. The premise is that a young, over-achieving doctor gets invited to a trendy boat party by a rival who is impressed with her doctoring skills. At the party, a new designer drug is introduced, everyone but the doctor gets high, and then, inexplicably, a zombie outbreak happens. The doctor, whose name is Liv, gets scratched as she runs to jump off the boat and wakes up in a body bag on the beach with all the other victims of the party. This is just the opening credits. Now the walking dead, Liv goes into a major depression (I mean, who wouldn't?) upon learning that she's dead and craving brains. She breaks up with her fiance, quits her promising career as a heart surgeon, and goes to work in the cororner's office, where she can steal the brains from the dead patients when she closes them back up after their autopsies, before sending the bodies out to their final arrangements. Now, here's the kicker ... after she eats someone's brain, she gets flashes of memories from that person's life and starts to take on some of their personality characteristics. She accidentally has a flash of a murder victim's life while the investigating officer just happens to be in the morgue inquiring about the body. Her boss (who has figured it all out within 10 minutes of the first episode) covers for her blurting out this data that she couldn't possibly know by claiming that Liv is a pyschic. Because that's easier to swallow. So now Liv eats the brains of murder victims that her boss looks the other way for, in exchange for studying her condition and trying to find a cure, and she runs around solving crimes as a psychic cororner sidekick to the rookie cop who believes her "visions". I really like this show, but then I really like police procedural shows. I always have, and I continue to love them even now with all the shit going on about real cops. But that's not the point of this review. In this second episode, we meet a couple in an open marriage. Javier is a brilliant young artist married to Lola, who appears to adore him. Javier is a stereotypical "male artist", meaning that he is all about passion - passion in his work, passion in life, and passion in bed. When Liv gets a flash of Javier having sex with someone who is not Lola, the crime fighting duo think they have a break in the case with his affair. As the cop says, "it's always the spouse". But when they go to Javier's loft to speak with his wife, they find the mistress with her arms around Lola, comforting her. Lola introduces her as "my favorite of Javier's lovers". This is where we learn that they have an open marriage. I like this scene because Lola defends her relationship with Javier without sounding defensive, as in "methinks she doth protest too much". [insert audio clip of Lola introducing Tasha as "my favorite of my husband's lovers"] Now, here is where I would normally get really irritated at how non-monogamy is portrayed in pop media. In The Mentalist, the open marriage was a red herring, and I loved that about the episode. The cops spend time and resources chasing down dead end leads because sex is so often a motive for murder, but their particular open marriage had nothing at all to do with the murder. That's very rare, in my experience. Usually these shows indicate who is the "bad guy" by making them kinky or non-monogamous or a casual drug user, because only deviants do those sorts of things, and deviants must also be criminals, obvs. So usually I get pissed off about that. But I didn't see the anger in this one, because I see the motive all the time in the poly community, so it's clearly a common experience. The anger at being replaced, not murder, of course. That's a very common fear, whether it's from couples who create a bunch of rules to protect their marriage or it's monogamous people who tell us without a shred of shame that they could "never do that" because "what if your partner finds someone they like better than you?" As usual, in order to discuss the parts that are relevant to polyamory, I have to spoil the big reveal. SPOILERS: We eventually find out that Javier knocked up his manager's teenage daughter. Which could have led to the manager being the murderer as either pissed off at Javier for "cheating" on Lola, whom the manager secretly loved and not-so-secretly thought Javier was a poor husband for, or the manager could have been pissed off at this older man getting his daughter pregnant. But, as...
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    16 m
  • Polyish Movie Reviews - Episode 56: Heartbeats

    Polyish Movie Reviews - Episode 56: Heartbeats
    Jul 15 2025

    A movie in French about polyamory? Will this finally be the French film that Joreth doesn't hate? Does it actually have any polyamory in it?

    www.polyishmoviereviews.com

    Apparently my distaste for French ennui cinema extends to French Canadian ennui cinema. I just don't like ennui, I guess.

    Yet another Netflix recommendation. Heartbeats is about "two best friends, Mary and Francis, who meet a charismatic wanderer named Nick and suddenly find their longtime friendship tested to its limits. As the love triangle between the three intensifies, Mary and Francis vie for Nick's affections in this intense story".

    Well, it's not wrong, exactly. It's just not nearly as interesting as the summary makes it sound. Which, to be honest, wasn't that interesting to begin with.

    I will say this about it. I think it was well acted. The seething jealousy that Marie and Francis feel throughout the film felt authentic as a viewer. But 2 hours of people smoking and glaring at each other from across rooms is just not my idea of a good time.

    Marie and Francis meet Nick. Both develop an interest in him. Nick is so neutrally friendly that it's not even clear what his orientation is for the entire movie. He never says or does anything that could be construed as genuine romantic or sexual interest for either character. And they, of course, don't say or do anything overt to Nick. They just seem to be really good, affectionate friends.

    Eventually Marie and Francis actually get into a rolling-on-the-ground fight, ostensibly over Nick, yet neither of them has admitted to anyone that they harbor feelings for him. Annoyed, Nick stops hanging out with them. After not seeing him for a while, both Marie and Francis run into Nick independently and admit that they have romantic feelings for him and he rejects them both. So Marie and Francis fuck each other? When Francis is gay, not bi?

    Later, they run into Nick at a party, who tries to say that he's happy to see them, but Francis emits this nails-on-a-chalkboard scream to drown him out, so Nick walks away and Marie and Francis glare at his diminishing back until they, too, turn and leave.

    Interspersed throughout the story, we see these little vignettes of, I dunno, documentary-style interviews I guess? Of people who have utterly miserable love lives. Nothing in any of these stories is about non-monogamy, they're all about breakups, or falling in love with the "wrong person", or one guy who doesn't seem to believe in bisexuality? I have no idea what any of this had to do with the story, except to maybe set the tone that French people only seem to be happy when they're miserable, I suppose. I know it's a terrible cliche, but I've yet to watch a potentially poly movie that even tries to disabuse me of this notion.

    On top of all this, the movie was fucking boring. Nothing happened. People smoked a mountain of cigarettes and complained about the movies they saw and Nick flirted his way obliviously through life, until an hour and a half later someone finally admitted to having feelings and someone else said they don't feel the same. Then everyone was unhappy some more.

    I got so bored, I started surfing Quora, which was really hard to do because I had to read subtitles.

    There was no story here. No plot. No conflict except the one that the characters made for themselves. Everyone was just ... unhappy. Except for Nick, who was oblivious.

    That's 2 hours of my life I won't get back.
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    4 m
  • Polyish Movie Reviews - Episode 55: The Duchess

    Polyish Movie Reviews - Episode 55: The Duchess
    Jun 15 2025
    Can a Hollywood-made dramatic biopic made in the current century actually show polyamory? That might depend on how we define "polyamory". Joreth reviews the narrative version of Lady Georgiana Cavendish's life as portrayed by Natalie Portman to see if polyamory happened during the Georgian era and if polyamory can be shown in a movie made in the modern era. www.polyishmoviereviews.com The Duchess is based on a true story about Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, who married William Cavendish, the 5th Duke of Devonshire. Biopics can be challenging to review because, on the one hand, I don't like to give out spoilers and I only do so when it's absolutely necessary to explain why a movie is classified as "poly" or not. But on the other hand, these are true stories that happened years, sometimes centuries ago, and the conclusion is already well-known (or ought to be). I think I said in another review that we don't watch biopics to be surprised at the ending, we watch them to see how this particular storyteller tells this particular story. The short answer here, because I like to give it right up front so that you don't have to sit through an entire review unless you actually want to hear all my ramblings, is that I really enjoyed the movie, and I'm going to say that it's poly-ISH. I thought it was well acted, well directed, the costuming was georgeous (as it should be, given the main character's importance in the fashion world), and it was surprisingly accurate, according, at least, to what Wikipedia has to say about these historical characters. Normally I try to keep my reviews to the poly (or not) content within the film, regardless of historical accuracy, but this time I think its accuracy is relevant to my categorization. Georgiana Spencer is the oldest child of John and Georgiana Spencer, and much loved. In fact, "love" is rather prevalent in her childhood home, in contrast to many noble and upper class homes of her time. Her parents doted on her and, apparently on each other. According to Wikipedia, there is no record anywhere that indicates anything other than loving monogamy for life from her parents, quite apart from the custom of the time. This, unfortunately, sets up our young G with some unrealistic expectations of adulthood and marriage in the peerage. On her 17th birthday, Lady Georgiana was married to the most eligible bachelor in English society, William Cavendish, according to the arrangements of her mother. G (as she is sometimes called) had only met her husband-to-be twice prior to the deal being made, but she believed it to be a love match. Her mother had hoped to not marry her off so young, but could not pass up the opportunity to raise her daughter's station to one of the most powerful men in the realm. Also, a true fact. So, off she went, the new Duchess of Devonshire. Unfortunately for G, William did not consider "love" to be a relevant factor in marriage. He had entered into a business contract for a male heir, not a soulmate. And so begins a long, volatile relationship between the Duchess and Duke of Devonshire. William seems to have no interests in anything other than cards and his dogs. G, meanwhile, develops quite a few passions, including drinking, gambling of all sorts, politics, and fashion. Over the course of their marriage, she becomes the quintessential fashion/style icon of the day, with all of English society hanging on her every design and fashion trend. And, as many of my very male partners have been surprised to discover after numerous rants from me, fashion very strongly influences politics and vice versa, so our young fashionista is also quite politically influential. William does maintain one other interest - sex. G discovers numerous affairs and unhappily looks the other way, as is the custom. Several years into her marriage, G is introduced to Charlotte, the daughter of one of his dalliances from before their marriage, whose mother is now dead and William decides that G should raise her. In the movie, we see G as resistent to and hurt by this revelation at first, but growing to love Charlotte as if one of her own children. The surviving correspondence between G and her mother indicate that the love, at least, was true - she did indeed adore Charlotte as her own daughter. G goes on to have 2 more daughters before finally producing a male heir for William, thereby finally fulfilling her half of the marriage contract that William arranged for. And this is where the poly - or not - content comes in. Until this point, we only see William as having indiscriminate sexual affairs with various staff, and G not having any affairs of her own. At this time in real history, a woman of G's status was allowed to have affairs, the same as her husband, but only after producing a son to secure inheritance. In the movie, this little fact is never mentioned. It is just assumed that her husband is a common philanderer and she is the dutiful wife, pained by his ...
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    22 m
  • Polyish Movie Reviews - Episode 54: Big Top Pee-Wee

    Polyish Movie Reviews - Episode 54: Big Top Pee-Wee
    May 15 2025
    Many today think of Pee Wee Herman as a children's show character, but that was not always the case. He started out as a very adult stand-up character that morphed into a weird, surrealist dark humor movie character, that then got a children's show, and THEN ... made this movie. What does all this have to do with polyamory? Good question! Joreth watches Big Top Pee-Wee to find out how polyamory fits in with the world of Pee-Wee Herman. www.PolyishMovieReviews.com Big Top Pee Wee is about as goofy as you'd expect. It's nothing like the first Pee Wee movie - Pee Wee's Big Adventure. That movie is kind of a comedic surrealist masterpiece, Tim Burton's directorial debut and a sign of what we would come to expect from him. The sequel is ... not that movie. Big Top sports a cast of dozens of recognizable B-movie faces and names, which, in my opinion, is just begging to fall under the All Star Curse. That's where the larger the cast and the more famous people on that cast, the higher the chance of the movie sucking. It's sort of a case of a movie being *lesser* than the sum total of its parts. While Danny Elfman scored both Pee Wee movies, Tim Burton turned down the movie in order to direct Batman (good call, Burton). I wouldn't call the movie "terrible". It's enjoyable enough to at least watch once. It's silly and it relies heavily on stereotypical "circus" tropes, which include a noticeable dose of casual racism and sexism and transphobia. But, it was also made in 1988, so what else can you expect? So, the movie is fine, which is not a ringing endorsement. But it absolutely is a poly movie. And to explain why, I have to give spoilers, but, honestly, you'll see it coming a mile away. And I'm going to talk about side characters, without giving away any of the major plot points or the conclusion of the main events. Big Top Pee Wee is a very simplistic rom-com plot - the protagonist starts out in a relationship with the "wrong one", has a chance meeting with Ms. Right, and somehow has to ditch Ms. Wrong and overcome the culture clash obstacles to win over Ms. Right before the final curtain. So far, nothing very poly about that. That comes in with the subplot of what happens to Ms. Wrong. Pee Wee starts out engaged to a school teacher, Winnie, in the very conservative and small town near his farm. They seem to like each other, but for no apparent reason other than appropriate gender, age, and proximity because they have nothing in common and absolutely no communication skills. Then the circus blows into town, literally. A big storm hits the town and when Pee Wee emerges from his storm shelter, a bunch of circus folk and their wagons are strewn across his farm. He invites them to stay on his farm to make repairs and rest after the storm, which gives him a chance to meet the star attraction, an acrobat named Gina. After getting caught making out with the hot Italian gymnast, Winnie breaks off their engagement, leaving her available to be courted by Gina's 4 strapping Italian acrobat brothers, who met her in town earlier that day. Their entire relationship progression happens off-screen, so this movie is really only a "poly movie" because it has poly characters in a successful poly relationship in it, not because we actually *see* any real polyamory happening. First we see Winnie angry at Pee Wee for cheating on her, prompting her to break off their engagement, and then leaving him at their scheduled lunch date to have a lunch date with the 4 brothers, causing Pee Wee to sneer and go off in a jealous rant to his pig about how quickly she got over him. Next, we see Winnie learning some acrobatic routines under the tutelage of the brothers, and mending fences with Pee Wee to transition to friends (after further rubbing salt in his wounds with how much better her life is without him). Finally, we see Winnie in the big climatic circus show, performing with the brothers and sporting 4 engagement rings. So, it's fun and fluffy and it has a happy polyamorous relationship, specifically an adelphogamous relationship. Adelphogamy literally translates to "brother marriage", which is a specific form of polyandry practiced historically and occasionally still practiced in some portions of Tibet and Nepal, in which a set of brothers is married to the same woman. Personally, I'm always rooting for the girl to get the male harem, so I may be a bit biased in my praise of this film. It's worth watching once, if you can tolerate 90 minutes of Pee Wee Herman and some 1980s casual bigotry, because the polyamory, what little we see of it, is presented positively and with a happy ending, and in a configuration we don't get to see in the media often. polyamory; polyamorous; poly; polya; polyam; poly-ish; nonmonogamy; non-monogamy; ethical non-monogamy; consensual non-monogamy; ENM; CNM; love triangle; polygamy; polyandry; fraternal polyandry; adelphogamy; movie review
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    5 m
  • Polyish Movie Reviews - Episode 53: Beloved Sisters

    Polyish Movie Reviews - Episode 53: Beloved Sisters
    Apr 15 2025
    Joreth reviews the biographical historical drama Beloved Sisters, a biopic about two sisters, Caroline and Charlotte von Lengefeld, and the man they love, German poet Friedrich Schiller. Discussing sorrel polygyny, can this FMF polygynous arrangement be polyamorous? Is it true? Did it happen? Does the movie actually show polyamory on screen? Follow along with this movie review with the transcript located on the show notes page of the website at www.polyishmoviereviews.com Beloved Sisters is a German biographical film based on the life of the German poet Friedrich Schiller and two sisters, Caroline and Charlotte von Lengefeld. Netflix says: "In the late 18th century, sisters Charlotte and Caroline begin an unconventional romance with poet Fridrich Schiller, who cares deeply for them both. As their situation evolves, each sister finds her life altered in ways she never imagined possible." I have not looked at my Netflix DVD queue in years, so I have no idea how this movie got in my queue. I suspect it was a Netflix recommendation based on other similar films I added to the queue. So I had no expectations whatsoever about this film. I did not know it was in German, I did not know it was biographical, I did not know it was a period piece. I admit that my tastes trend towards "pedestrian". When it comes to foreign cinema, I tend to either love it or hate it, with far more in the latter category. This one, however, I found myself drawn in, way before I looked it up and discovered that it had a few accolades to its name. Was it polyamorous? Yes? I'm going to say "yes", but it was not in any modern sense of the word. It's possible, given how restrictive mores against non-monogamy altered the shape of relationships in previous eras, that it would not be considered polyamorous at the time, but "normal". Period pieces are hard to evaluate for this reason. The definitions of love, of romance, of relationships, all are different in different times and different places. The bonds between women in such highly patriarchal societies tend to be strong, and more common than today's more liberal cultures. Physical affection is different. Hell, even men were, for a time, expected to provide for their wives but save their love and affection for their platonic male friends and their passion for their mistresses. So the bond among these three characters may not have been the norm, necessarily, but would it have been so "unconventional", as per the description, as to have warranted its own term like polyamory? Maybe? Charlotte and Caroline lost their father at a young age, and were raised by their mother, who was widowed from a rare love marriage. Caroline was talked into a marriage of convenience to save the family from destitution, but the mother openly regretted the necessity. All three of them willingly agreed to the arrangement out of love for each other, with Caroline taking on the responsibility without guile or resentment. As children, the sisters pledged their deep devotion to always remain together, to share everything, and they lived by that oath. Charlotte was sent to the big city to be presented at Court in the hopes of winning herself a wealthy husband as well, but she met a poor poet instead. As per the modesty mores of the time, Charlotte and Fritz, as he was called, were chaperoned by her respectably married sister. Because of their deep bond to each other and the considerable amount of time spent with Fritz, both young women fell in love, and he fell in love with both women. Caroline's marriage had to be worked around, so they devised a plan: Charlotte would be sent back to the big city where Fritz could court her under the watchful eye of her godmother and Society, Caroline would stay with her husband to work on changing their mother's mind about allowing Charlotte to marry for love instead of money while somehow procuring a divorce for herself. Caroline sent Fritz away after a one-night-stand, and the three of them continued their scheming and plotting to live happily ever after. Eventually Charlotte was given permission to marry Fritz as he finally started to achieve some success in his career and Caroline celebrated their union. Eventually, the couple went on their way while Caroline remained behind once again, visiting some months later. This is when she learned that the couple had not consummated their marriage out of Charlotte's sense of duty and concern for her sister not being able to "share" Fritz fully with the marriage between them. Caroline urged Charlotte into her husband's bed and slipped out in the night to disappear for several years, except for another one-night-stand at some point when they ran into each other, this one kept a secret from Charlotte. Eventually Charlotte became pregnant and was reacquainted with her sister, who was now traveling in the company of some wealthy man and hoping to begin writing a novel. She moved into the couple's house and midwifed her sister's ...
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    10 m
  • Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 52: A Good Old Fashioned Orgy

    Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 52: A Good Old Fashioned Orgy
    Mar 15 2025
    A group of aging friends decide to say goodbye to their youth with ... an orgy? Joreth finds out if a bunch of single people can navigate group sex with respect and maturity, and does group sex make it poly or not? OK, I have had this movie in my queue forever and people keep telling me about it. So I finally sat down to watch it. I'm gonna say that it's not poly but ... it's not NOT poly either. Here's the thing, a little personal background on me: When I was in high school and college, I had ... um, friends. I had *those kinds* of friends. I remember having a couple of conversations with some guys who were flirting with me, where I tried to explain how my friends worked. I had never heard the word "polyamory" before I was 21, and I was DEFINITELY not into any kind of "open relationship". I was raised strictly white Christian middle class (there are whole articles out there about how people who aspire to a higher class tend to be quite rigid about class rules, while those who are comfortably in that higher class tend to break the rules all the time, and my parents were both blue collar and Latina trying to move up the class ladder, which means we followed the rules *exactly*, or else!). So, in my world, there was no such thing as non-monogamy, ethical or otherwise. You met your soul mate sometime in your teen years, you got married (after college, of course), got a nice white collar job, had 2.5 kids, a dog, and a house in the suburbs. Exactly as my parents did (seriously, it was me, the brain, and my sister the jock, a dog, my dad proposed to my mom at her senior prom, the only thing missing was the literal white picket fence). Anyway, that was How Things Were Done. Except ... they weren't. So I was trying to find traditional "boyfriends" for a monogamous relationship, but how do you do that when you don't really get jealous and you can't handle your boyfriend getting jealous at you still being friends with your exes and half your social circle is made up of guys you've messed around with between boyfriends? So, in these conversations, I very distinctly remember being asked more than once, if I have sex with my friends and I'm friends with my fuckbuddies, and my friends are actual, intimate, emotionally connected relationships, then what's the difference between them and boyfriends? I know that I had answers to those questions, but I don't really remember them now. What I know now is that I was really straying into Relationship Anarchy territory without that term having been coined yet. So, this movie reminds me a lot of my teen years, and the kinds of friends I used to have. I would not call what my friends and I did back then "polyamory" and I'm not calling this movie "polyamorous". But I turned out to be poly because this was the kind of friend group I liked to have. Or maybe because this was the kind of friend group I liked to have, I ended up discovering that I was naturally polyamorous. I'm going to say that this is *not* going on the poly movie list because there aren't any really poly-specific values or lessons or situations happening here, but it's definitely an example of why taxonomy needs to be taken with a grain of salt. As I've said in several reviews: taxonomy can help us to identify when something definitely is this thing, and when something definitely is not this thing, but there are always those things in between this and that. And this movie is in between. "A thirty-something party animal decides to throw one last crazy beach party at his father's swanky Hamptons pad. The only obstacles are convincing his reluctant friends to join in the fun, a blossoming romance and a real estate agent trying to sell the house out from under him." This description manages to be both accurate and totally vague at the same time. Eric is a guy whose dad owns a beach house and he and his friends spend their summers there every year since high school. Eric's parties are legendary, with themes and costumes and tons of food and massive amounts of liquor and people crashing on the lawn furniture because they're too drunk to drive home, and cops being called 3 times in the same night and the neighbor loaning them a cow, and of course there's the one guy who always gets naked. I spent most of my own 30s going to parties like these. Then Eric's dad decides to sell the house. So Eric decides to have the mother of all parties as their final hurrah. But how to top everything he's already done? Eric decides to host, not a giant bash like usual, but a small, intimate orgy, just between his closest friends who have been with him since they were kids and who actually stay in the house together every summer. This takes a little convincing, but eventually the whole group is in, which includes 3 single women, 3 single men, and one guy who has a girlfriend who is not one of the high school buddies but is accepted as part of the group. The weird thing about this movie is that the scenes where they're discussing and...
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    19 m
  • Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 51: 5 To 7

    Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 51: 5 To 7
    Feb 14 2025
    A married woman takes a lover, but can Joreth take yet another affair movie? www.polyishmoviereviews.com It's so much worse when they manage to get you to like a movie before they turn it to shit. No, you're not experiencing deja vu. I said that exact same line when I reviewed Paint Your Wagon. It's still true. 5 to 7 was a Netflix recommendation, so naturally I went into it expecting it to be a total shitstorm. Instead, I found it charming. The Netflix summary says: "an aspiring young novelist finds his conservative beliefs about love and relationships tested when a chance encounter outside a New York City hotel leads to an intense affair with a French diplomat's beautiful wife." Everything about this descriptions says this movie should be terrible. The main character is said to be conservative and I can't get into movies unless I can connect to the characters. An "affair" implies a secret, and the qualifier "intense" leads one to imagine this is some sort of dark romantic thriller. It was nothing like that. This was more like a romantic comedy, but surprisingly without any artificial conflict between the two lovers. Brian is very young (to my ancient, middle-aged eyes), a 24-year old would-be writer living in New York. Walking down the street, he sees a beautiful woman smoking outside of a hotel. He crosses the street and manufactures a reason to start talking to her. She seems antagonistic to his overtures but invites him to meet her again at the same time and place next week. So he does. His appearance at the appointed time surprises her and she invites him to spend a couple of hours with her at a museum between 5 and 7 the following Monday. He agrees to that too. So they spend the time wandering around the museum, and later the park, getting to know each other. I still feel that she is sending him prickly signals, but apparently she is just being French. Towards the end of their date, Ariel (as she is named) casually announces that she is married with 2 children and nearly a decade older than Brian. He is taken aback by this information and she responds as if confused that he would have a problem with it. She goes on to explain that she and her husband have an open marriage with very specific rules and it's all very normal and acceptable in her culture, and implies that Brian is a naive, uncultured, close-minded American and thinks his "conservative" monogamous beliefs are the weird ones. Brian is unable to accept that consent is the element that makes something ethical or unethical not an arbitrary adherence to someone else's structure, and says he can't see her. Ariel says that Brian knows where she will be every Friday afternoon if he should change his mind. 3 weeks later, he does. So she gives him a hotel room key and says to meet her there at 5. Apparently, according to Ariel, "5 to 7" is French slang for "open relationship", at least, of a particular type of open relationship. She says that it used to be literal - that it was a reasonable time of the day for a spouse's whereabouts to be ... fuzzy and unknown, so that's when people looked the other way while their spouses visited their affairs. Eventually, it morphed into a saying, something like a "5 to 7 relationship" that meant a primary marriage with side partners. But Ariel and her husband Valerie found the literal time to be convenient for their lifestyle so they keep with tradition. This makes her an "old-fashioned girl". The bulk of the movie is vignettes of Brian and Ariel spending time together and we see their feelings for each other grow. We learn that Valerie has a mistress of his own and the two women know each other, and everyone in the equation feels content with the arrangement, except Brian. Even their kids are cool with things and at one point tell Brian that they're glad he's mummy's boyfriend and they welcome him to the family (which throws him for a loop because he didn't realize the kids knew). So, at this point, I thought the movie was cute and all the non-monogamous people seemed well-adjusted and content, and I was willing to overlook the whole couple-privilege thing because everyone seemed to be happy with things, and the stuff that bothered Brian was less about the couple privilege and more about the very notion of non-monogamy. I got the impression that if they had more of a commune-style or network style relationship, he still would have been uncomfortable. Until it became about couple-privilege. As it always does, because that's what happens with privilege. And with rules. I have always said that if everyone just wanted to follow a rule, then a rule is not necessary. And if someone did not want to follow a rule, then a rule would not stop them. Throughout the movie, we learn about Ariel's and Valerie's rules, which are very much designed to protect their privileged status as an upper class monogamous couple. And that kept bothering me. It would be one thing if Ariel said "as a mother and wife of a diplomat,...
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    18 m
  • Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 50: 3 (Drei)

    Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 50: 3 (Drei)
    Apr 29 2020
    Yet another movie named "3" - will this one have some polyamory in it? Or will it be another cheating film? Joreth reviews the German film Drei, or 3, for polyamorous content. I've updated my Netflix queue with poly movies so long ago, I can't remember anymore which movies were added because I saw them on a poly movie list somewhere and which were added because Netflix recommended it to me based on some movie from a poly list that I had just added. So I have no idea where this "3" came from. The Netflix summary reads: "Berliners Hanna and Simon, a couple in their 40s, have grown comfortable in their marriage. Independently, each meets and romances Adam, a handsome younger man. When Hanna becomes pregnant, all three must face what they've tried to ignore." This has every element of a movie I will hate - infidelity, secrecy, Relationship Broken Add More People, and babies as plot devices. This movie isn't going to get a Get Out Of Jail Free card on these points. But I actually liked the movie anyway. First of all, the description isn't exactly accurate. It's pretty close, certainly closer than Sleep With Me was. But Hanna and Simon aren't exactly "comfortable". They seem fairly happy, if settled with each other. I mean, sure, they do seem comfortable with each other, but the description would seem to imply the use of the word "comfortable" as a stand-in for bored or in a rut. This couple still has an active sex life and still expresses affection and love for each other. Their relationship isn't broken and neither of them go out looking for something to fix it, or their lives. They seem more or less content with their lives, although they experience some tragedy early on in the movie. They are "comfortable" if you use the definition of your favorite blanket that you curl up with to watch your favorite movies with. So, they have a fairly happy, long-term relationship that experiences some stress that just comes from life. Then they each independently meet Adam. The description seems to suggest that each half of the couple were the ones to pursue Adam, but I got the impression that he's the one who put the moves on the couple. Adam is, apparently, bisexual and fine with casual flings. He has interludes with Hanna and Simon, and then goes about his business. But Hanna and Simon keep thinking about Adam and seek him out for more (which he is certainly amenable to). And yet, Hanna and Simon still seem happy with each other, and they're still both sexually active together. So, as the summary gives away, Hanna discovers she's pregnant and doesn't know who the father is. So, like in Cafe au Lait, the infidelity is revealed and they all have to deal with it. And this is where I have to give away the ending in order to explain why I think it's a poly-ish movie. I do wish I could start finding some poly-ish movies where the polyamory is the plot (or just another element in the story) and not the conclusion. Anyway, here goes. SPOILERS: When the infidelity is revealed, everyone splits up and stops seeing each other for a while. But then Hanna receives tickets to a show from Simon and when they meet up, they talk. Both admit to missing each other and both admit to missing Adam. Meanwhile, Adam has a conversation with his ex-wife in which it is revealed that he's in love but has lost his chance (he doesn't say who he is in love with). I don't think that the baby was really a plot device to bring them back together. Hanna didn't have some weird "you must now both do your parental duty" moment, at least, I didn't interpret any of the scenes like that. The pregnancy seemed to be an excuse to get Hanna to barge into Adam's apartment when Simon was still there, thereby revealing the connections. But what seemed to bring them back together was that they genuinely missed and loved each other. I feel that the movie could have been written without a pregnancy and the reunion scenes could have still happened as-written (minus the dialog about the status of the pregnancy). So the couple shows up at Adams house together and the final scene is a very artistic threesome that shows everyone naked and everyone loving each other. This film was more artsy than I generally prefer, but then most foreign films are (this being a German film). It did have some gorgeous scenes, including a beautiful dance between a woman and two men that was fairly blatant foreshadowing. But for once, I didn't find the characters hard to relate to. I found Hanna to be the most disagreeable, but she was intelligent and knowledgeable and she liked to argue politics and she was involved in media. Her husband was quiet and passionate and artistic with a soft heart, filled with compassion. And Adam was a brilliant scientist trying to save the world in spite of the public's Luddite fears holding back his research. I think it was obvious why each of the characters liked the others, whether I liked them or not. They were nuanced and complex, and that always ...
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