Threesome (film)
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| Threesome | |
|---|---|
 DVD cover for Threesome |
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| Directed by | Andrew Fleming |
| Produced by | Brad Krevoy |
| Written by | Andrew Fleming |
| Starring | Lara Flynn Boyle Stephen Baldwin Josh Charles Alexis Arquette Martha Gehman |
| Music by | Thomas Newman |
| Cinematography | Alexander Gruszynski |
| Editing by | William C. Carruth |
| Distributed by | TriStar |
| Release date(s) | April 8 1994 |
| Running time | 93 min |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
Threesome is a 1994 film, written and directed by Andrew Fleming. The film is an autobiographical comedy mixed in with some social commentary, and is based on the college memories of Fleming. It was awarded an R rating by the Motion Picture Association of America.
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[edit] Plot
The film starts out with two college students, the shy and intellectual Eddy (Josh Charles) and the All-American jock Stuart (Stephen Baldwin), ending up with a female roommate. The university thought that Alex (Lara Flynn Boyle) was a man (based on her name) and thus the three students are forced to live with each other until the university can move Alex to a female dorm.
Eddy falls in love with Stuart; Alex falls in love and tries unsuccessfully to seduce Eddy; and Stuart is in love with Alex. The trio become good friends and scare off anyone who tries to seduce the other. Eventually, Alex, Stuart and Eddy agree to have an actual threesome and that seems to destroy the friendship, and raises the possibility that Alex might have become pregnant.
After the threesome they start to drift apart. Three weeks later the semester ends and Alex is finally moved to a female dorm. The next year Eddy got a single dorm with no roommate and the three continue to drift apart. Eddy (who acts as the film's narrator) eventually finds a boyfriend, Stuart finds happiness in a monogamous relationship with a woman and Alex remains single. While they drifted apart, only to see each other for lunch occasionally, they do not seem to regret the friendship they had while in college.
[edit] Criticism
Upon release, the film received mixed reviews. Critics such as Roger Ebert felt that film was unfunny, and that "Like many kids their age, these three are more bold in talk than action, and the movie sounds right; it sounds like undergraduate human dialogue, intended to shock, to liberate, to amuse."[1]. Yet, even Peter Travers' review for Rolling Stone magazine wrote, "We're supposed to get all teary when kinkiness threatens to break up a friendship that was hard to swallow in the first place. There's lots of glossy cinematography, courtesy of Alexander Gruszynski, as the three lovers wander the campus separately, looking contemplative. Now there's a laugh. Eddy, a film student, actually makes reference to François Truffaut's ménage à trois classic, Jules and Jim. Eddy, you wish." [2].
Many feminists and gay filmgoers also felt that the characters' sexuality was underdeveloped and done primarily for the narrow enjoyment of heterosexual male college students. The characters engaged in a threesome but do not seem concerned about the possible consequences of sex, i.e. disease or pregnancy, until after the fact. The film also failed to show the important moments after the sex scene, where the emotional arc of each character could have developed further.
Alex was a heterosexual college man's dream: a woman who was eager to have sex with two guys at the same time without any concern for commitment. Throughout the entire film, Eddy was effeminate and quickly rejected the advances of the only other gay college student in the film. On the surface, Stuart was heterosexual but in the threesome sex scene seemed open to the possibility of homosexuality, even as he later rejects Eddy's attempts to seduce him. In print interviews, the actor Baldwin mentioned that some scenes that would suggested that his character was gay or bisexual such as a kissing scene during the big "three-way", with Eddy and a one-on-one sex scene that occurred after Alex moves out were deleted. These deleted scenes were not included in the DVD release of the film.
[edit] Post-Threesome
More recently, the film has developed a cult sensibility and is looked upon with greater affection than upon its initial release.[citation needed] The film has also been viewed in a new light as one of a group of films marketed at Generation X, that were released in the early 1990s and which helped to pave the way for more openness in American cinema about human sexuality and more positive portrayals of gay characters. In this historical sense, the gender and sexual politics in Threesome are compared to other major films such as Pump Up The Volume, When The Party's Over, My Own Private Idaho (1991), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992), Philadelphia, Wayne's World, What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993), Reality Bites (1994), Naked In New York (1993), and Hackers (1995).
Charles played a gay character and Baldwin played a character who was at least slightly bisexual. At the film's end, both characters are alive and happy. While Baldwin's character asserted that he was heterosexual, he played an anti-intellectual tough guy who treated his gay roommate as an equal. Alex played a liberated woman who loved herself and her own sexuality. All these characters were a sign of the cultural changes occurring in society. Yet the film did not destroy anyone's career. Sexuality on or off screen was less of an issue than it had been in the past. The director and the cast all went onto have successful individual careers.
[edit] DVD
In 2001, a DVD version of the film was released with some special features; a director's audio commentary, an alternate ending, various language subtitles and cast talent files.
[edit] Trivia
- In the years after the film, Baldwin became a born-again Christian and a member of the Republican Party. He has since distanced himself from the film in interviews and felt the need to state that he is not bisexual or interested in threesomes.
- Some critics noted similarities between Threesome and the 1993 film Three of Hearts, which had been released the previous year. Both films had the word "Three" in the title, dealt with love triangles including bisexual characters, and included among the main actors an actress from the television series Twin Peaks and one of the Baldwin brothers. [3] [4]
[edit] External links
- Threesome at the Internet Movie Database
