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Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 41: Le Bonheur

Poly-ish Movie Reviews

Release Date: 10/14/2018

Polyish Movie Reviews - Episode 54: Big Top Pee-Wee show art Polyish Movie Reviews - Episode 54: Big Top Pee-Wee

Poly-ish Movie Reviews

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.   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...

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Polyish Movie Reviews - Episode 53:  Beloved Sisters show art Polyish Movie Reviews - Episode 53: Beloved Sisters

Poly-ish Movie Reviews

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     Beloved Sisters is a German biographical film based on the life of the German poet Friedrich Schiller and...

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Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 52: A Good Old Fashioned Orgy show art Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 52: A Good Old Fashioned Orgy

Poly-ish Movie Reviews

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...

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Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 51: 5 To 7 show art Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 51: 5 To 7

Poly-ish Movie Reviews

A married woman takes a lover, but can Joreth take yet another affair movie?     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...

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Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 50: 3 (Drei) show art Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 50: 3 (Drei)

Poly-ish Movie Reviews

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.

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Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 49: Something About Sex show art Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 49: Something About Sex

Poly-ish Movie Reviews

3 couples struggle with the definitions of monogamy and fidelity, after some "insight" from Jason Alexander.  Joreth reviews this film to see if any ethical non-monogamy could possibly come out of it at all.

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Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 48: Three show art Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 48: Three

Poly-ish Movie Reviews

There are so many movies called "Three"!  Is this one that actually has polyamory in it?  Is there really an FMF triad like on the cover?  Are any of the characters polyamorous?  Or is this just another cheating cautionary tale or threesome gone wrong story?  Joreth reviews this particular "Three" to find out!

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Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 47: Bandits show art Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 47: Bandits

Poly-ish Movie Reviews

Can a movie with blockbuster names be a poly movie?  Joreth reviews Bandits with Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, and Cate Blanchet to see if there is any polyamory in this star-studded film.

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Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 46:  The Blood Oranges show art Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 46: The Blood Oranges

Poly-ish Movie Reviews

Can a movie set in the '60s and filmed in the '90s really feature a polyamorous quad?  Joreth reviews The Blood Oranges for a little-seen poly structure to see if there is any polyamory in it at all.

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Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 45: The Unbearable Lightness Of Being show art Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 45: The Unbearable Lightness Of Being

Poly-ish Movie Reviews

How well does this particular fan recommendation hold up to Joreth's poly critique?

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Ah, French ... the culture of love!  Where "alternative" relationship structures are not frowned upon and the people understand the power of passion!  Or do they?  Joreth reviews a movie filmed in the Swingin' '60s on recommendation from a listener, to see if there is any polyamory or ethical non-monogamy in this film made during a time of exploration and experimentation, or if it will just confirm monogamous tropes.

 

Someone recommended this movie to me as a poly movie, and I can see why he did, but I have to disagree. I don't think this was a poly movie. I think this movie had a poly character in it, but the movie was not polyamorous. As far as enjoyment goes, my tastes run towards the banal and crude - I like action flicks and screwball comedies. I've written several times that I just don't get artsy films or foreign films made during the sexual revolution when things were all experimental and everything looked like the writers and directors were permanently on LSD.   So you might like this film if your tastes differ from mine - don't avoid seeing it on the basis of my personal enjoyment if you happen to be into artsy or foreign or '60s movies. 

And as far as artsy or foreign or '60s movies goes, this wasn't even all that horrible. It didn't have the bizarre music or jump cuts of A Woman Is A Woman. But, probably because of the difference in cultures, I just didn't find this movie very interesting or the characters very compelling. I know, there's irony in that statement after admitting that I like movies like Caddyshack. But it's the truth, I found the movie just kind of blah. However, I can see other people enjoying it. I have lots of friends who like lots of movies that I don't enjoy, and I can see some of them really liking this film.

 As for the poly stuff, the plot is about a married man who loves and adores his wife and kids, but who falls in love with another woman. According to my movie guidelines, cheating movies do not get added to the list, but a movie where the cheater genuinely loves both of his partners and there is some outside constriction preventing them from living honestly (such as social taboos) may be exempted and be added to the list.

Francois loves Therese, his wife. He's very happy with his life; content. But then one day he meets Emilie. And he falls immediately in love. This was his first strike against him, for me. I don't much hold with the love-at-first-sight bullshit. I believe people can have instant attractions to each other, and then sometimes, by coincidence, they are attracted to people who happen to also be compatible to them, so the attraction-at-first-sight can blossom into a true love, and it is when that happens that people think they fell in love at first sight. But we don't hear epic tales of attraction-at-first-sight that then turns out poorly. It's a matter of confirmation bias, or the Fake Boob/ Fake Toupee fallacy (which says "I can always spot fake boobs/toupees because they look fake, except when they don't and I can't"). Love at first sight is real, except when it isn't.

Anyway, so Francois falls in "love" with Emilie and immediately begins an affair with her. As I said, cheating movies don't make the list, but loving both partners might exempt it, so this movie could have been added to the list. The reason why it's not is because of the ending, which changes the whole tone of the movie into "multi-partner relationships are Wrong and Bad", and which I'll go into next, so spoilers ahead.

SPOILERS:

I think Francois is a selfish, egocentric jerk, more concerned with his own pleasure than anything else. Not liking a character, of course, is not grounds for expulsion from the list. But I didn't like him anyway. There isn't any indication in the movie that there is strong social pressure against turning this cheating V into an honest relationship. It just appears to be How Things Are Done, but there's no constriction or struggle against it.

Francois is honest with his mistress, Emilie, about being married with kids and about being happy with his home life. He gives her no illusions that she might one day become Mrs. Francois. So he has that going for him. But he never expresses any interest or desire in trying to change things, and Emilie accepts that she is the mistress out of hand.

However, the conversation we see between Emilie and Francois about this very thing is what makes me believe that Francois is actually poly and not just a cheating bastard who thinks with his prick, and is probably why the movie was recommended to me in the first place. He explains to Emilie how he loves both his wife and his mistress, that they're very different people and not interchangeable, and how happiness and love grows when there are more people.

In this conversation, he says that it was only chance that led him to meet his wife first and Emilie second, but if they had met in the reverse order, he would probably be living with Emilie instead. Emilie doesn't try to talk him out of his marriage, doesn't pout and wish to replace the wife. She seems to accept her role as mistress without any fuss. So this is why I don't see any particular outside pressure because the characters don't seem to be stressed or pressured to conform - they seem to be content with the way things are.

Later, Therese, the wife, notices that Francois has been extra happy of late and asks him why. Francois tries to get out of telling her, but she pushes, and he finally admits that there is another woman. Here we have another conversation that indicates he is obviously poly. He explains to Therese that his love for Emilie is not love taken away from Therese, that all his love for Theresa is still all his love for Theresa, it's just that extra love grew for Emilie when he met her.

Therese's lines indicate that she is unhappy with this revelation, but her acting doesn't show any emotion at all. At the end of this 2 minute conversation, Theresa smiles and does a complete reversal, accepting that her husband has a mistress and instigating sex.

At this point, I'm thinking, "ah, French films ... I just don't get them." But then came the part that took this movie out of the running for me.

This conversation between Francois and Therese takes place in the woods on their weekly picnic with the kids. Francois takes a nap after the sex and wakes up to find Therese gone. After a frantic search through the woods, he finds a crowd of people surrounding the body of his wife, who drowned herself in the lake. Obviously, Therese did not accept sharing her husband.

So we went from a movie with a poly guy stuck in a mono world with a wife and a mistress, to a movie with a selfish man whose personal pleasure was more important than the life or happiness of those around him, who cheated on his wife and kept the lie for as long as possible with no intentions of ever telling her except that she browbeat it out of him, and of said wife being so opposed to non-monogamy that she killed herself immediately, leaving her two toddler-age children alone with her cheating husband.

This, to me, sets the tone for "non-monogamy is doomed to fail, here watch this train-wreck to see why" and takes this movie off the list.

But it's not over yet.

So then Francois is left alone with his kids. But because he's a single father in the '60s, it is determined that he cannot care for the kids himself and gives them up to his brother & sister-in-law (or is it sister & brother-in-law? Whatever, it's the kids' aunt and uncle) to raise. After finishing the rest of the summer without his wife, without his kids, and without his mistress (he stayed in the town he was working in, rather than going back to his home, where the mistress happened to also live), he decides that he wants his happiness back.

So, conveniently, he has a young woman sitting around waiting for him and immediately sets her up in the role of substitute wife and mother. Emilie is just so happy to have Francois back in her life that she agrees to anything he wants. So Emilie steps in and Francois goes back to, basically, his original setup with a beautiful young wife and two young kids.

And that's where it ends.

This is why I find him to be selfish and egocentric. This whole movie is all about what Francois wants and he maneuvers everyone else around him to provide him with the life he wants without regard to everyone else's feelings. Emilie is now saddled with two toddlers, and we see a montage of Emilie feeding the kids, cleaning up after them, and being the dutiful housewife, whereas Therese was happy being the housewife, but the news of his infidelity made her so miserable that the only way she could see out was death. And in the end, Francois gets his life back with apparently no consequences except that he only has one woman instead of two, but he doesn't seem to mind all that much. By the end, the two women certainly seemed interchangeable to me, as Francois walks off into the sunset with his new wife and kids, all holding hands and strolling through the woods as if nothing has changed.

Although Francois said a lot of very good poly lines, this movie had that elusive and hard-to-quantify tone that implies, to me, that non-monogamy is bad. As I said in the guidelines, it's not whether a movie ends happily or tragically, or whether a multi-adult relationship breaks up or stays together - it's what the movie says about non-monogamy that puts it on the poly-ish movie list or not. And, in spite of the main character clearly being about loving multiple people, this movie said to me that non-monogamy is cruel and wrong and that a happy nuclear family is the goal.

I think one could defend some ambivalence in the message, with Francois being written sympathetically and not as a villain, so I don't actually recommend that ya'll avoid seeing this movie. It may be worth your time. But I think that the way things were wrapped up, ambivalence aside, the message was more pro-nuclear-family than pro-consider-alternatives, so I will not include it on the list, but I will suggest that people might want to see this movie if they're into French cinema or if they want to hear a protagonist defend the idea of loving two women at the same time.

 

polyamory; polyamorous; poly; polya; polyam; poly-ish; nonmonogamy; non-monogamy; love triangle; vee; adultery; cheating; affair; infidelity; mistress; fmf; couple privilege; movie review