Poly-ish Movie Reviews

Welcome to Poly-ish Movie Reviews, where I watch the crap so you don't have to! I watch a lot of movies. Some of those movies are great. But a lot of them are crap. I'm here to help you sort out which is which, so that you don't have to waste your time on bad cinema, unless that's your thing. No judgement - I like a lot of terrible movies. I'm just saying that, as we polys know, love may be infinite, but time is not. Let me help you manage that increasingly rare and precious time of yours by sharing my opinions on movies that some have claimed to be "poly" so that you can make better decisions on which ones to spend your time with.

Polyish Movie Reviews - Episode 55: The Duchess 06/15/2025

Polyish Movie Reviews - Episode 55: The Duchess 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. 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 cheating and his withholding of affection, but faithful. 8 years into marriage, after the birth of their two daughters but before the birth of their first son, William and G take a holiday in the city of Bath, where they meet Lady Elizabeth Foster, known as Bess. G and Bess develop a very close, intimate friendship. Surviving correspondence confirms that they had a strong, adoring bond, but no indication of it being anything other than platonic. The movie implies otherwise, at least once. Bess has become destitute after separating from her husband, as one might expect in a society where women had no rights and no property of their own. So G suggests that Bess move in with her and her husband. Some time after moving in, G discovers her husband having an affair with Bess. In the movie, this devastates G, who declares that her husband "took" the one thing in the world that was her own - her friendship with Bess. [inserted movie clip of G's confrontation with William over Bess and her demand that Bess leave and William's denial of that demand] G is now forced to live in the same home with her husband and her husband's mistress, her former best friend, facing them both at the breakfast table every morning. At this point in the film, I would have said that this is not poly, but it could have been a scenario that not-really-poly couples find themselves in when they attempt an open marriage that they're not ready for. Imagine, if you will, a stereotypical unicorn hunter couple, where they agree to "open up" because the wife is bisexual and the husband "allows" her to explore her bisexuality as long as it's only the same-sex part she explores. This hypothetical couple finds a hot bi babe who agrees to be with the wife (but don't worry, he won't participate, because the wife is the only one who is allowed to have sex with him!), except one day the wife comes home to find her hot bi babe is in bed with her husband, contrary to all the rules they have about no sex with the husband, no sex alone with the hot bi babe, etc. So the wife pulls a veto because this was supposed to be HER girlfriend, and the husband just refuses to break up with her. Now the happy little pseudo-FFM triad is a hostile FMF-V with the wife calling the hot bi babe "homewrecker" and the husband totally lost in NRE with the new shiny. So I might have put this movie in a poly analogues category because, other than the sex between the two women (which was only implied once in the film, and not explicitly an ongoing part of their friendship), that's pretty much what happened - hubby stole the side chick from wifey and refused a veto. But we're only at the 1/3rd mark in the film. Apparently, in real history, the talk of the town was that Bess took advantage of her friendship with G and "engineered her way" into a sexual relationship with William. Bess also engaged in several affairs of her own outside of her relationship with William, which were well documented. The whole arrangement of a married man having his mistress actually live in his marital home along with the wife was quite the scandal. But there's more to the story, both in the film and in real life - we'll get to that. So, back to the film, G is being tortured by being face to face with her husband's mistress, her former best friend, every day. Bess keeps trying to be friends with G, but G keeps rebuffing her, and William remains irritatingly aloof and uncaring. Frankly, if it weren't for the implication in the film that Bess was using her connection with William to get custody of her children, I wouldn't understand why she wants to be in a relationship with him at all. He is an uninteresting man with no personality whatsoever. G, at least, was stuck with him because she was married to him and it wasn't her doing. The movie does show tenderness between William and Bess, I'm just not sure what *else* there is to a relationship with him other than using his power. In real life, Bess separated from her husband after 5 years of marriage and he somehow managed to refuse to allow her to see her *two* sons for 14 years. In the movie, William gets her *three* sons back after a few weeks of their little "arrangement". So, while William and Bess are playing house in G's home, making this not really poly because G and William don't love each other and it's basically a cheating story at this point, G starts having affairs of her own. In the film, G knew a young man as a teen, named Charles Grey. They lost touch when G got married and Charles finished school and got into politics. As Charles entered Parliament as a young adult, their paths crossed again. This is the point in real history where G and Charles *actually* met. After her estrangement from William over Bess, G begins a love affair with Charles, not a sexual affair. Remember, in real history, a woman in G's position was allowed to have affairs but only after birthing a son, and in this point in the movie, G has not yet had a son. Of course, in the movie, we do not know that she is allowed to have dalliances of her own at any point. G proposes to her husband and Bess that she will give them her blessing as long as William gives his own blessing to her affair with Charles. William outright refuses and threatens to kill Charles if she doesn't call off her relationship with him. Bess tries to stand up for G (still trying to rekindle their friendship), but William reminds everyone just who is in charge around here. So G cools things with Charles. Eventually G conceives a male heir. In real life, it is unknown when her affair with Charles Grey began, but the movie indicates that they finally consummate their relationship almost immediately after the birth of G's son as the result of some matchmaking by Bess in another move to prove her love and friendship to G. Given that, in real life, G has Charles' illegitimate daughter less than 2 years later, that is probably accurate. Once again, this is not exactly a poly relationship. This is two people trapped in a marriage of convenience having extramarital affairs with the people they would rather be married to if they could be. Except it appears that G is warming to Bess again. In a breakfast table conversation, G announces that she is going to the city of Bath ostensibly for her health but probably to arrange more time with her lover, Charles. At William's look of surprise, she announces [inserted clip of G saying Bess can stay here and look after "our" husband"]. She may have said that sarcastically, but it's a pretty poly thing to say. I get the impression that, William's lack of permission notwithstanding, G has mellowed over his ongoing relationship with Bess because of her own relationship with Charles, and Bess's attempts at reconnecting. One particular scene that I liked, which has nothing to do with polyamory or lack thereof, is when G is lying in bed with Charles and they're going over the equivalent of the tabloid gossip columns that love to profile the fashionista Her Grace, Lady Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, and the camera shows us a little political drawing of G, implying that she uses her sex appeal and promises of inappropriate favors to get votes for the political party that she supports. I liked this scene because that was a real drawing of the real Duchess and a real accusation made against her. It appears that the sentiment "celebrities should stay out of politics" is not a new one. Anyway, G's not so discreet indiscretion raises her husband's ire and he storms her holiday house to demand that she give up her lover or else he will pull all his rank and do to her what Bess's husband did to Bess as well as ruining Charles' political future. So G calls things off with Charles in exchange for her children and goes back to William. At this point, she discovers that she's pregnant with Charles' child. Wiki history does not indicate when their affair actually ended. G has their daughter and is forced to give her to Charles' parents to raise. This is the turning point in the movie of her relationship with Bess. William makes Bess inform G of William's decision to have G disappear for the pregnancy and give up the child. William intends for this confrontation to be a two-against-one scenario, disempowering G even further, but Bess turns on William for his lack of empathy. While she understands the position that women have in society and is willing to play within her role, she is angered by William's lack of compassion for the difficulty that these roles place on them. So Bess refuses to take William's side, even though she goes along with the decision. [inserted audio clip of Bess's declarations to G and William] William will not be allowed to play house with his mistress while he banishes his wife for daring to get pregnant from her own affair. Still not terribly poly. Regardless of who Bess is in favor with at any given moment, G and William are forever at odds. G's only two loving relationships were ripped away from her by her husband, as well as a child. And William is just a jerk. But the final scene with text explaining what happens to everyone from here shows G walking up to Bess and William and chatting pleasantly with the both of them. The text states that Georgiana, Bess, and the Duke lived together until Georgiana's death. The next shot is of G and Bess in the garden holding hands, and the text says "With Georgiana's blessing, Bess went on to marry the Duke and become the next Duchess of Devonshire." Because of this final scene, I would put the movie in the "poly-ish" category, but it would be there on shaky ground. While it's not exactly ambiguous, I mean, it flat out says that the 3 of them live together until death and that G gives her blessing for the other two to marry, and Kiera Knightly is directed to express affection towards Bess in this final shot and a softening towards William in the previous shot, it's still ... not quite right. So in a move that I don't like to do, I'm turning to the real history. Bess was found to be wearing a lock of G's hair in a necklace upon her death and had a lock G's hair in a bracelet on the bedside table. Bess died many years after G and yet still kept those momentos on her until the day she also died. While Bess was living with the Cavendishes and sleeping with William, and after G knew about it, G wrote many letters to Bess professing her very strong love for her. One such oft-quoted passage includes: "My dear Bess, Do you hear the voice of my heart crying to you? Do you feel what it is for me to be separated from you? … Oh Bess, every sensation I feel but heightens my adoration of you." The movie portrayed their friendship as having been destroyed upon the discovery of the affair, and a slow transition back to something like a friendship, but it never showed the strength of the passion that G had for Bess even after the discovery. In real life, G, apparently, loved Bess very much and Bess seemed to have returned that love. Bess also was not with William the entire time. She left on several occasions and had long-standing affairs with other influential men, sometimes only returning after both the Duke and Duchess implored her to return. Because the movie was about G, and because she was married to William, I think most people would be inclined to keep putting G in the middle of either a V with her as the hinge and William and Bess as the arms, or in a triad with all three of them together. But because Bess married William after G died, I think of it as more like a V with *Bess* in the middle and the two spouses as the arms. I think a triad can also be defended because, in that second-to-final scene, William asked for some semblance of "calm normality" and Kiera Knightly played G as reaching some understanding about William's choices and being open to building a mutually affectionate connection. But G and William never had anything in common, so I lean more towards seeing it as once hostile metamours beginning to build a bridge. Whatever understanding they came to in that moment, I feel that their connection to each other was never going to be as strong as the connection that Bess had with either of them. So that, plus the real life facts that everyone, including Bess, continued to have affairs outside of their "ménage à trois" allows me to interpret this movie as poly-ish, not just a cheating movie, and not a primary couple with side partners. I think Bess was the hinge that kept their contract marriage together. The three of them lived together in this, whatever you want to call it, for 25 years. Some interesting notes about how Bess was received in the family. She had 2 children of her own with William, in addition to her two sons from her previous marriage. They were born abroad and it took several years before Bess was able to bring them home to be raised along with the Cavendish children. Bess had other affairs with other influential men and actually expected to marry another duke at one time. But after several months of waiting for a marriage proposal that never came, Bess returned home to the Cavendishes. The Cavendish children were none too pleased at their father's remarriage to Bess after G's death. The son, Hart, referred to Bess as "the crocodile". Just in case anyone was wondering, Charles got married shortly after his "niece" was born and he and his wife had 16 children of their own. He moved up through parliament and eventually inherited an earldom from his father, making him Earl Grey. Yes, *that* Earl Grey. He used this particular blend of black tea from China flavored with bergamot oil in his household and served to guests. It became so popular with the guests that Lady Grey was asked if it could be sold. There are two different tea companies who make their claim on the original Earl Grey tea - Twinnings, which claims that they replicated the recipe from Earl Grey, and Jacksons of Picadelly, which says they created the recipe that Earl Grey used. Also, in case anyone was wondering, G's daughter with Charles, Eliza, was eventually told who her real parents were, sometime after G died in 1806. About a decade later, Eliza had her first daughter, whom she named Georgiana. One final trivia fact - One of Georgiana's siblings became the direct ancestor of Princess Diana. polyamory; polyamorous; poly; polya; polyam; poly-ish; nonmonogamy; non-monogamy; open marriage; open relationship; hierarchy; hierarchical; couple privilege; love triangle; vee; adultery; cheating; affair; infidelity; mistress; polygyny; fmf; mff; relationship; polycule; historical; period drama; biopic; couple; throuple; thruple; movie review /episode/index/show/polymoviereviews/id/36820255

Polyish Movie Reviews - Episode 54: Big Top Pee-Wee 05/15/2025

Polyish Movie Reviews - Episode 54: Big Top Pee-Wee 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 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 /episode/index/show/polymoviereviews/id/36534790

Polyish Movie Reviews - Episode 53: Beloved Sisters 04/15/2025

Polyish Movie Reviews - Episode 53: Beloved Sisters 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 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 birth and the early care of her new nephew while writing under her brother-in-law's tutelage. Fritz begged Caroline to finish up the rest of the plan so that the 3 of them could return to his hometown and live as a threesome, but Caroline seemed to get progressively more and more bitter with the knowledge of their betrayal and her recent life choices, including some upper class prostitution with her wealthy and famous traveling companion. Charlotte grew more and more resentful of Caroline's behaviour and at some point discovered her and Fritz's one-night-stand. This drove a wedge between the sisters. So when Caroline announced that she was pregnant, didn't know which of the very many men she had been with recently was the father, and that the knowledge of the baby would almost certainly prevent her husband from finally allowing her a divorce, Fritz arranged for a country preacher to hide the birth and care for the baby until the divorce was finalized. So Caroline set out across the country with the man who introduced the sisters to Fritz, her cousin and one of Fritz' closest friends, as her guardian and protector on the trip. Here, Caroline stops writing and the couple loses contact with her until she finally writes them a very perfunctory wedding announcement between herself and Fritz' best friend. Many more years pass, more kids are born, finally their mother insists on the sisters' reconciliation before her impending death. During this rather morbid family reunion where the mother gets her material affairs in order, the sisters finally have a confrontation, each accusing the other of being responsible for their separation. Until Fritz nearly succumbed to the latest fit from a chronic respiratory illness, whereupon waking, he finds both sisters sitting in shadows, like bookends, at the foot of the bed. Caroline wrote Fritz's first biography and the only biography written by someone in his inner circle. This biography has none of this ménage à trois, as their own mother called it at one point. It has been debated just how close everyone was to each other, but this movie makes it clear that they were definitely a romantic triad, although the sisters did not share any sexual contact with each other. This triad was portrayed as both women equally loving the same man and he loving them both equally, and all three openly dreaming and planning with each other to live as a triad someday. I'm going to say that, although this dream was never realized in this film, and in fact the relationship between the sisters was strained so far at the end that they inevitably parted as two independent couples, that this film nevertheless showed us a functioning triad, kept apart by external forces strong enough to poison the relationships. Both women had a loving and sexual relationship with the man in the middle, both of them were not only aware of each other's feelings but actively encouraged and supported each other (with the exception of the secret, for which it was the secretive part that made the act a betrayal, not the sexual act itself), and the man openly (within the three of them) loved both of the women. They shared a secret language and written code, where they wrote out their plans and dreams, and we saw both honesty within the group and also how secrecy creates tension and breaks bonds. And all of this was set against a beautifully shot historical drama of revolution and class warfare and the patriarchal segregation of the genders. One of the final scenes includes a short but insightful monologue of something that I believe a lot of progressives talk about today - how the real family bonds and the strength of the family comes from the women and the work they do to maintain connections, and how this strong connection may have been what drew Fritz in from the beginning - the sisters and the mother were the real triad, and the intense bond among women was the beacon of family that Fritz had always longed for, so when they allowed him into their inner circle, he was able to feel a connection that is out of reach for most men because that is not how they relate to each other. And that connection among women, once broken, was also responsible for his later isolation and exclusion, because the bonds belong to the women, they merely allowed him along for the ride for part of the time. I really enjoyed this film. It was a drama but it wasn't as heavy as a lot of other dramas I've reviewed. It showed a triad, and even though it did not last, it was not destroyed by bad writing and morality punishments, but rather by the pressures of the culture that can stress any non-normative relationship. And we saw a fair amount of narrative history that I didn't even bring up because it was less relative to the plot than being a backdrop for it - the French Revolution, the beginning of the Weimar Classicism literary and cultural movement, a significant improvement to the printing press that enabled literacy among the masses, and the spread of classical ideas such as the importance of truth in history, of philosophy, of aesthetics, and other elements of the Enlightenment. If you're up for a historical narrative biography with subtitles, give this one a chance. polyamory; polyamorous; poly; polya; polyam; poly-ish; nonmonogamy; non-monogamy; ethical non-monogamy; consensual non-monogamy; ENM; CNM; triad; love triangle; vee; polygamy; polygyny; fmf; relationship; polycule; historical; period drama; biopic; throuple; thruple; movie review /episode/index/show/polymoviereviews/id/36020870

Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 52: A Good Old Fashioned Orgy 02/07/2025

Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 52: A Good Old Fashioned Orgy 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 planning for the orgy are somehow simultaneously uncomfortable and also not necessarily wrong. So, for instance, there are a couple of scenes where they're each discussing with each other whether or not to do it, and they cover things like penis size and consent: [inserted discussion montage] Then there's the scene where Eric and his best buddy go to an underground sex party to do research on how to successfully host an orgy. The things that happen in this scene are things I've personally witnessed at "public" sex parties, but, while accurate-ish, they're also played as way discomforting for comedic value. That's actually kind of hard to do. [inserted clip of sex party] Before I saw this film, I was expecting one of two things - either a lot of gross humor and ultimately a failed orgy, or a party where somehow all of these friends end up coupling up and in a romantic dyads where each couple has sex mostly apart from the others. I even had a tweet prepared about having a pet peeve of "mainstream" movies thinking that an orgy means several individual couples having sex exclusively with their own partners, but in the same room. And the movie did actually set itself up for one of these two endings. But it surprised me by not doing either one. There was a big tense moment where it looked like the orgy was going to blow up. And there was a lead up to some coupling up with at least one woman seeming to harbor a secret flame for one of the men. But then things took a turn. And the orgy got started. The couple that was a couple before did stay a couple and didn't go outside of each other, but there's usually at least one of those at an orgy. Hell, *I've* been one of those couples at an orgy. And another 2 people ended up in what looked like the beginning of another couple. But A) it wasn't the couple that the movie set up for us, and B) they still mixed it up during the orgy even though they seemed pretty into each other. But the morning after, everyone seemed cool with each other and all the friendships seemed intact. It was a one-time thing and they went right back to being friends. No weird, awkward, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice moment of regret and a return to normalcy by pretending it never happened. So, after spending the last couple of decades around sex-positive, kinky polys, watching this group of mainstream people muddle their way though the complexities of group sex was a little awkward. But they reminded me of the people I used to be friends with before I had my own first orgy, they're just older than I and my friends were back then. So I actually kinda liked it. And, to be honest, I spent some time in New England with a now-former partner who lived there, who had friends who are not part of the poly, swing, or kink communities ... and I kinda think this movie nailed that kind of social group. I feel like I met all of these characters on one of my trips up North. The one part that I really didn't like was what happened with the married couple. The orgy ended up being 8 people - 7 of whom were high school friends and the girlfriend of one of them who has been part of the group for a while since she started dating her boyfriend. But the complete pack is actually 10 people. Another couple is in a monogamous relationship, they have a baby together, and a wedding planned during the summer the movie takes place. The group decides not to invite this couple because they have a baby and they would have been married about 2 weeks by the time the orgy takes place. For some reason, the idea of this couple having group sex with them squicks everyone out. And I can't figure out why, because the dating couple - the one guy from high school with his outside girlfriend - are exclusive too, and they have sex in the same rooms as the rest of the orgy participants, but they don't have sex with anyone but each other. So I'm not sure what the problem is with the married couple being involved, except that the group obviously has a set of assumptions about what "marriage" and "parenthood" mean. The married couple eventually find out about the orgy plans and get upset that they weren't invited and they decide they want to participate, but the group tells them that they can't come. [inserted confrontation clip] Now, on the one hand, I do appreciate the group being clear about their boundaries. I would have been annoyed if they had tried some sort of shenanigans to get out of it, rather than just flat out telling them "no". But on the other hand, once the married couple said that they were in, seeing as how the other exclusive couple was in, it was kinda a dick move not to include them. I had assumed up until that point that the reason they didn't invite them was because they figured they wouldn't want to because of their relationship, but it turns out that the group was the uncomfortable ones about their marriage and parenthood. During the orgy, the married couple actually show up anyway, thinking that once they're in the house, nobody would actually kick them out. So, again, it's a "on the one hand, but on the other hand" sort of thing - first, it's really shitty of them to show up when they were told they weren't included, but second, I kinda wanted the orgy to have gotten over all their issues (as they did) and to welcome them once they were there. Instead, the married couple peeked through the window, saw the initial weirdness and no sex happening, then decided to just have sex together in their minivan in the driveway, and that's the last we saw of them. [insert peeping tom clip] So I thought that was disappointing. But other than that, it actually wasn't a terrible movie. A little crass, a tad boorish, even a bit mundane maybe, but perhaps only in comparison to my very liberal social bubbles. I come from that world, and I still work in that world, and, I have to admit, I even occasionally have fun in that world. I mean, I do listen to country music and watch '80s sitcoms. So I am not calling this a poly film. But it's not that far off. It might even overlap a little bit. And I enjoyed it more than I expected to. polyamory; polyamorous; poly; polya; polyam; poly-ish; nonmonogamy; non-monogamy; ethical non-monogamy; consensual non-monogamy; ENM; CNM; relationship; polycule; group sex; swinging; partner swapping; ethical slut; movie review /episode/index/show/polymoviereviews/id/35186010

Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 51: 5 To 7 02/06/2025

Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 51: 5 To 7 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 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, my schedule is very full. I have blocked off the hours of 5-7 for 'me time', which allows me the freedom to pursue relationships like this, but I have very many other things in my life that I value and this is all the time I am willing to spare right now." I might have wrinkled my nose a little bit, but honestly, my life isn't much more available. But instead, she said that she and her husband had a *rule*. They "agreed" on this thing, and this was what it was. The feelings of the new partner did not matter, and, in fact, the feelings of Ariel or Valerie did not matter. What mattered is that the rule was followed. And people only follow the rules when they want to, until they don't, when they stop. As his feelings for Ariel grow, seeing her only from 5-7 on certain days is not enough for him. He wins an award for his writing and this is a very important moment in his life. Naturally, he wants to share it with the important people in his life. Ariel is not allowed to see him romantically outside of 5-7, but she is allowed to attend public functions with her husband while refusing to acknowledge her side relationships in public. Honestly, that would piss me off too. I'd rather someone stayed home than show up to something important in my life and pretend that we're mere acquaintances. She argues with him that rules are rules. I would argue that the rules did not always exist. At one time, they were negotiated. Now is a time for a renegotiation. So now, the conclusion of the film, because, as usual, it's the conclusion of the film that makes or breaks it for me in terms of whether or not something is to be classified as 'poly-ish". SPOILERS: Brian falls deeply in love with Ariel and asks her to marry him and allow him to be a stepfather to her children. Ariel's first reaction is anger that he has betrayed her by "breaking" their agreements. But her next reaction is to decide to divorce her husband and run away with Brian. I literally facepalmed here. This movie had the opportunity for some real personal growth for all the characters. This is the pivot point of the film - the part that determines the future. This one scene decides what happens to the characters for the rest of their lives. This point was a chance for Ariel and Valerie to examine their couple privilege, to really look at their arrangement and question if it was truly fair, truly *ethical* how they were treating their side partners. Is it really fair for anyone to place limitations on people's emotions? On their futures? On the structure of a relationship? To insist that people serve a relationship rather than a relationship serving the needs of the people in it? This was a moment where Ariel and Valerie could have taken a good look at the privileges they enjoy for pretending to participate in the mainstream culture while stepping outside of it at their whim but not in any way that inconveniences them while massively inconveniencing their partners. And at the same time, Brian could have had the opportunity to keep chipping away at his biases and his insecurities and his narrow exposure to other cultures and other beliefs. Brian could have really stretched his comfort zone by challenging himself to see Valerie as family, the way Valerie professed to see him (of course, he didn't really, as addressed in the previous bit about couple privilege, but that could have been his own growth opportunity). What was never even considered by literally anyone in the entire film was Ariel having two husbands. What if Brian could have become a part of their household? What if Valerie's girlfriend, Jane, could have had the potential to join, instead of merely accepting that this was always destined to be a short-term, time-filling, relationship? What if the children, who had grown attached to Brian, could have had a stay-at-home dad along with a socially active mom and a breadwinning father? And maybe another bread-winning mother? What if Valerie and Ariel had to learn that other people mattered and they couldn't always have things their way all the time? What if everyone had stopped paying lip-service to the term "family" and actually built one? In the end, many years have gone by and we see that all is as it should be - Brian finds a nice monogamous woman to settle down with and have children with, Jane gets her own husband, and Ariel and Valerie are the same old happy family-of-four that they've always been, polite, civilized, and appropriate. Brian and Ariel have now managed to romanticize their past relationship because it didn't last long enough for them to get out of the NRE stage and see each other as full people with flaws and quirks and gross little habits that they hate, and so live on in each other's memories as "perfect". Instead of recognizing that it's possible to love more than one person at a time. Oh, and one more thing, during Brian and Ariel's breakup, we learn that Ariel was apparently never in love with her husband and that she has only known Twu Wove with Brian - a man barely into adulthood who doesn't seem to understand her at all and with whom she only knew for a short time. It's not clear how long, but the children don't seem to have aged at all during their relationship. This comes out of left field. There is absolutely no indication anywhere in the film up to this point that Ariel's and Valerie's marriage is anything other than perfect and exactly what they both want. And I really hate it when writers do this to non-monogamous couples. People who are written and portrayed as happy together suddenly, without warning or lead-up, reveal that their whole relationship is a sham and everything is a lie. People who are happy together do not make the sorts of decisions that the writers need these people to make, so they invent a conflict that nobody ever saw until that conflict was necessary to drive the two people apart. I have been in those relationships where I was open and honest with my partner about having other partners and being polyamorous, and after a while, they begged me to go monogamous with them. Those breakup conversations are all the same. They always included a moment where I had to say something like "what part of this didn't you understand?!" And, knowing what I know about how the brain works and what happens to our memories, I fully believe that this weird sort of "we were totally happy together and then she let me think it could be just the two of us, but then she chose him over me for no good reason!" disjointed story is what many of those exes remember of our time together. I would be completely unsurprised to learn that they felt my responses to our relationship made about as much sense as these sorts of characters in movies do, like Ariel and like Mason and Samantha in Fling. But being the person that other people think makes "out of character" decisions, I just think that those who write their characters to make out of character choices don't really understand their characters very well. So we end up with a woman whose life is happy and perfect and exactly the way she wants it to be, until she decides to throw it all away to live monogamously with some kid she hardly knows, except she then chooses "duty" and "family honor" to stay with a man she never really loved to begin with. I have a lot to say about the dysfunction of their relationship with their couplehood and their rules and their devaluing of their other partners, but her actions and decisions here made no sense. Each time she flip-flopped, it was totally contrary to everything we knew of her character up until that point. But at the same time, when you think you can legislate feelings, you are in for a surprise when those feelings jump up and do something unexpected to challenge that legislation. And this is why making rules like this is bad. Sure, the original family group remained intact. That's the goal for most of these rule-makers and their rules - protect the family at all costs. So, by that standard you could say the rules and their relationship as structured were successful. But that price tag... Neither of the main characters are with the people they believe that they truly love. And when there was an alternative that would not have "destroyed the family" that was never even considered... I had thought of adding this to the list under the criteria for "if the movie shows positive and/or realistic scenarios of poly issues & situations, such as coming-out conversations, dealing with discrimination, overcoming jealousy, reaching out to metamours, etc." because "other criteria" also allow for a movie's inclusion if the relationship ends and Ariel had some good defenses to Brian's reaction of her marriage. But for a movie to be included even when the relationship ends, it has to end "due to outside pressure or personality conflicts, but seems to be an otherwise functional and happy relationship and it was not the polyamory that caused the breakup". And, in this case, I feel that the primary plot relationship ended because of the open nature of the relationship. Brian could not accept a non-monogamous relationship. I have no problem with him having a problem with the time restrictions and not allowing their relationship to grow into a more traditional-marriage-like arrangement. But he wanted a *monogamous* marriage with her. It never occurred to either of them to have a live-in Vee, or even an N with Valerie's mistress. When Ariel accepted Brian's proposal, she also wanted monogamy. But then when she changed her mind and chose to stay with her husband, she did not even think to offer a compromise of having two husbands. She broke up with Brian because he wanted something different than what she originally offered and she would not compromise or consider alternatives. The open relationship is what broke them up. She chose her life with her husband, and she ended her relationship with Brian. She did not offer to keep what they always had and nobody considered any alternatives. She chose her husband over Brian. And "the movie makes any character choose one partner over another, and especially if it implies that choosing one makes the protagonist happy in spite of the jilted lover being a decent partner" is one of the "does not make the list" criteria. Also, "the movie seems to be written with a tone that implies that open relationships cannot work," it does NOT go on the list, i.e. the poly characters' decisions only make sense in the context of a writer who doesn't understand polyamory. So, with that, I will not include this on the polyish movie list, in spite of there being some reasonable defenses of their lifestyle in the early conversations between Ariel and Brian. I also left out a whole bunch of details, if anyone still wants to see the film. It was charming, for me, right up until the end. polyamory; polyamorous; poly; polya; polyam; poly-ish; nonmonogamy; non-monogamy; ethical non-monogamy; consensual non-monogamy; ENM; CNM; open marriage; open relationship; hierarchy; hierarchical; couple privilege; love triangle; vee; relationship; polycule; couple; rbamp; movie review /episode/index/show/polymoviereviews/id/35173040

Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 50: 3 (Drei) 04/29/2020

Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 49: Something About Sex 03/24/2020

Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 48: Three 03/09/2020

Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 47: Bandits 03/01/2020

Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 46: The Blood Oranges 04/18/2019

Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 45: The Unbearable Lightness Of Being 04/15/2019

Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 44: She's Gotta Have It (movie) 04/12/2019

Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 43: The Mentalist 12/15/2018

Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 42: Family 12/14/2018

Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 41: Le Bonheur 10/14/2018

Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 40: Keeping The Faith 09/15/2018

Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 39: A Strange Affair 09/07/2018

Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 38: Fling 07/26/2018

Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 37: Esmeralda Comes By Night 06/14/2018

Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 36: Sleep With Me 05/14/2018

Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 35: Rita, Sue, & Bob Too! 04/14/2018

Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 34: Blow Dry 03/25/2018

Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 33: The Sex Monster 03/04/2018

Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 32: Lutine 01/16/2018

Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 31: Shortbus 12/15/2017

Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 30: Kiss Me Again 11/14/2017

Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 29: Professor Marston & The Wonder Women 10/17/2017

Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 28: Story of O 09/15/2017

Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 27: Amelia 08/19/2017

Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 26: The Wedding Banquet 07/15/2017

Poly-ish Movie Reviews - Episode 26: The Wedding Banquet Can a marriage of convenience turn into a happy polyamorous triad? Joreth reviews The Wedding Banquet about a gay man, his lover, his green-card wife, and his very traditional Chinese parents to answer this question. The DVD summary says "Successful New Yorker Wai Tung and his partner Simon are blissfully happy, except for one thing: Wai Tung's conservative Taiwanese parents are determined he find a nice girl to marry! To please them and get a tax break he arranges a sham marriage to Wei Wei, a sexy go-getter in need of a green card. But when his family swoops down for the extravaganza, Wai Tung would do well to remember that at a traditional Chinese wedding banquet, sexual repression takes the night off!" I was actually prepared for this to be a crappy movie. I expected the summary to be like so many others - vaguely written so I could interpret it as suggesting a potential poly story, get me hopeful, but ultimately to let me down with sex-negative values and a cautionary tale against bucking "tradition". I am so happy to have been wrong. One of the benefits of polyamory, in my opinion, is that polyamory is a fundamental change of mindset on what makes a "family". Regardless of what form any given poly group takes, or even what any individual thinks "counts" as polyamorous, the underlying requirement for polyamory is to be able to design your own relationships based on the needs and wants of the individuals involved. And I think that's a valuable paradigm shift no matter what relationship structure any given family group ends up as. With polyamory becoming a "movement", that is, a recognized word and concept demanding social acceptance, we are seeing more people designing their own relationships, whether they call it polyamory, or even whether it "counts" as polyamory, or not. I think that families have always done this, but I think there has been more heartache and more lies to cover it up. The Wedding Banquet illustrates, not only the lies and heartache that goes into forcing a family group to look like it's "supposed" to rather than what it is, but also the changing climate of society where acceptance of alternative family structures makes for more happiness than adhering to "tradition" under the erroneous belief that "tradition" has always been so, therefore it's the best way ever, did. Wai-Tung Gao is a Chinese immigrant and American citizen living in New York with his boyfriend, Simon. They have a stable, happy relationship and have been together for 5 years. But Wai-Tung's family is very traditional Chinese. Mr. Gao was a commander in the army and has survived a stroke only by the thought of living long enough to see his first grandchild. Mrs. Gao signs Wai-Tung up, without his permission, for every matchmaking service she can find in an effort to get him married, to carry on the family name and honor his family. They are completely unaware that Wai-Tung is gay and that he lives with Simon. Mr. Gao invested in an apartment building for Wai-Tung to own and manage, and in the loft of that run down building lives Wei-Wei, another Chinese immigrant who is a struggling artist. Because Wei-Wei can't hold down a job and her art is not generating any income, she lives in substandard living conditions by renting the loft, which is not zoned for habitation, at a very low price. The building is a dump, the air conditioning and the water are always broken, and she has to call Wai-Tung all the time to fix things. Wai-Tung takes pity on Wei-Wei, and lets her slide on the rent sometimes, even though she makes him uncomfortable by flirting with him and expressing envy that Simon has such a handsome boyfriend. Eventually, she loses yet another job, and when Wai-Tung comes over with Simon to install a new air conditioner, she confesses that she will have to move back to China because she has no money and she can't find a "stupid American" to marry her for a green card. Later, Simon suggests to Wai-Tung that marrying Wei-Wei would solve everybody's problems. Getting married would get Wai-Tung's family off of his back, and Wei-Wei would have a green card and a place to live so that she wouldn't have to go back to China. Wai-Tung is resistant, but Simon convinces him to try it. So they move Wei-Wei into their basement bedroom until the immigration process is over, and Wai-Tung tells his family that he's getting married. Things seem to be running smoothly, until Wai-Tung's parents announce that they're coming to America for the wedding. Naturally, everyone freaks out, but Simon takes it upon himself to coach Wei-Wei about the things a wife should know about her future-husband, and Simon and Wei-Wei switch bedrooms. The parents arrive, and Wai-Tung goes through the charade, looking very uncomfortable every step of the way, but Simon watches over him a bit bemusedly. Simon never once exhibits any sort of jealousy or resentment, even when praise for Simon's meal all goes to Wei-Wei because part of the scheme is to convince his parents that she is a worthy wife, including being a good cook. Now, a gay couple who needs a woman as part of the household is a pretty good place to start changing the social climate about what constitutes a family. I don't know that *I* would necessarily call it "poly", if it's only the two men who have a romantic relationship, but two men and a woman who share a dwelling and raise children certainly qualifies as "family" in my book. Especially when all parties are there with the blessing and welcome of everyone else. We can quibble about the fine print of whether it's poly or not, but I don't think it really matters in the long run. If a family of that arrangement wants to call itself poly, I see no benefit in arguing the point, and plenty of sex-centric and sex-negative harm in insisting on arguing the point. The question comes in when this family is arranged for the purpose of hiding the true arrangement from other people, namely, the parents. Because of my opposition to the way marriage is handled in this country, I actually have no issues whatsoever with a couple marrying for the legal benefits that marriage offers, such as a green card. I know it's technically fraudulent, but since I have a problem with the whole foundation of a government tying legal benefits to emotional entanglements, I see no *moral* problem with this situation. So, that leaves us with the parents. If it weren't for the parents, and the green card, the threesome would remain a twosome, and that's where the discussion of "is this poly?" comes in. That's what makes this situation more complicated than the hypothetical gay-couple-and-woman-form-a-family that I posed above. This arrangement is being done for the benefit of people who are not part of the relationship. So, for about 2/3 of the movie, I was composing in my head the review for this movie with this in mind, leaning towards "not poly" but still a good movie - especially for those interested in LGBT issues. But then I changed my mind. I've decided this is, at the very least, poly-ISH, but in order to explain it, I will have to give away some spoilers. SPOILERS: It was Simon's idea for Wai-Tung and Wei-Wei to get married and, although he is against lying in the first place, because he loves Wai-Tung, once he has committed to the charade, he never wavers on that score. He never accuses Wai-Tung of turning on him, of switching teams, or of leaving him. He never accuses Wei-Wei of moving in on his turf, of trying to steal Wai-Tung, or of being a homewrecker. He embraces Wei-Wei as part of the family and does his best to smooth things along. Wai-Tung's parents insist, as part of their family honor, on throwing a huge wedding banquet after Wai-Tung "shames" them with a quickie City Hall wedding. The fraud starts to weigh heavily on the bride and groom as they are forced to go through tradition after tradition, meant to cement the marriage and instill the pressure of honor and family on the couple. But Simon goes through it all, supporting the couple and keeping the peace. As the best man, he gets to remain by Wai-Tung's side, but never as the jealous secret, always as the supportive partner whose lover is in a difficult position. His apparent enthusiasm for the wedding festivities is how I imagine any poly OSO would act when his partner marries another. It's how I imagine Franklin would have behaved if I had married my metamour Maxine for the health benefits - a business arrangement between trusted friends that he would celebrate and support. Even through the enforced kissing of the bride and groom, and the regular reminders of the hetero marriage while being completely ignored and left out by the entire wedding party who are unaware of his relationship to the groom, Simon faces the whole ordeal with good humor and compassion. Wei-Wei has a crush on Wai-Tung from the beginning. As the farce continues, she is reminded over and over again how serious and important marriage is, and she seems to be having doubts. But as the banquet drags on, and the alcohol flows, she appears to leave behind the tension of her secret and falls into the role of the happy bride. Eventually, the end of the reception draws near as wedding guests are passed out on the hotel ballroom floor and the bride and groom are obviously drunk and exhausted. The "happy" couple withdraws to their complimentary newlywed suite upstairs while Simon takes the groom's parents home. As Wai-Tung collapses on the bed, room service knocks on the door. But it's not room service. Too late to stop at Wai-Tung's command, Wei-Wei opens the door to yet another Chinese wedding tradition - the Newlywed Invasion. The peer group of the bride and groom invade the couple's room on their wedding night to drink and play games, both encouraging the consummation of the marriage and interfering with it. They bring card tables and folding chairs, and appear to be settling in for one hell of an all-night-long party. The guests demand that the bride and groom play little games, like blindfolding the groom and making him find maraschino cherries placed on the bride's stomach and chest with his mouth, while she writhes beneath him, tickled by his seeking. Wai-Tung tries to get his guests to leave, and they finally agree to leave after one more game. The bride and groom are to get under the covers and take off all their clothes. The guests will not leave until every single article of clothing has hit the floor. So the couple complies, and the guests leave. Finally, Wai-Tung and Wei-Wei are left alone, naked, in bed together. Wai-Tung starts to fall asleep, but Wei-Wei has other plans. In an alcohol-induced fugue, she seduces Wai-Tung and we are led to believe that they have sex. After the wedding, Wai-Tung, Wei-Wei, and Simon go back to their pretend family while Wai-Tung's parents hang around for a couple of weeks. They end up staying much longer than planned because Mr. Gao's blood pressure is too high to risk flying. So now things start to get a little tense. Simon, although he still supports the sham that was his idea and still does not resent Wei-Wei, is nevertheless getting irritable at not being allowed to sleep next to his partner, and at having their sex life curtailed. Wei-Wei is getting cranky because she is required to sleep every night next to a man she has a crush on, knowing that he would rather be in someone else's bed. Wai-Tung is stressed out because his parents are still there, he is married to someone he didn't want to be married to, Simon is continuing his social life without him, and he has to constantly soothe everyone else's hurt feelings. A couple more weeks later, we learn that Wei-Wei is pregnant from her wedding night. Simon throws a fit, but not because Wai-Tung had sex with Wei-Wei - Wai-Tung had already confessed to getting drunk and things getting "a little out of hand". No, Simon is pissed because Wai-Tung did not have *safe* sex, and now their family can't go back to normal after the parents leave, as was the plan. Simon decides that he is leaving when the parents do and Wei-Wei decides to have an abortion, since the marriage was never supposed to last anyway, so it's not fair to have a child in that situation - after all, once she has been granted citizenship, she will be free to divorce and marry again for love. Then Mr. Gao has another stroke, and after watching his life fall apart around him, Wai-Tung finally confesses everything to his mother. She is devastated, she doesn't understand what she did wrong to get a gay son, and she insists that the father never be told. One day, Simon is out walking with Mr. Gao. Simon regularly walks with and cares for him since his stroke. Mr. Gao says, in English, "happy birthday Simon" and hands him a red envelope. Simon, surprised, says "you speak English?" Mr. Gao has hidden this fact even from his son, who has had conversations and arguments in English around his parents, believing that they could not understand what was being said. Simon opens the envelope and discovers a thick wad of U.S. bills. Suddenly, it dawns on Simon that red is the Chinese color for marriage, and that Mr. Gao gave this exact same gift to Wei-Wei when he arrived, as the traditional wedding present. [inserted video clip of the conversation between Simon and Mr. Gao]. The next day, Wei-Wei and Wai-Tung leave for the abortion clinic, and Mrs. Gao, suspecting what they're about to do, tries to stop them, or at least tries to go with them to make sure they are really only "going shopping". But the couple leaves without her. On the way to the clinic, Wei-Wei has a change of heart. She tells Wai-Tung that she wants to keep the baby, and if Wai-Tung wants to help, he can find her an apartment with no rent, but if he doesn't want to help, then to just stay out of her way. Wai-Tung, upon hearing that he is about to be a father, decides that he will be a part of his child's life. But first, he should ask Simon how he feels. Wei-Wei agrees that they ought to talk to Simon. Wai-Tung and Wei-Wei come home, and Simon approaches them, his face full of concern, and asks if everything went OK and how does Wei-Wei feel? [inserted move clip where Simon is asked to be one of the fathers of the baby]. And THAT'S where this movie became a poly movie for me. Simon looks at them incredulously for a moment, then a tentative smile appears as he realizes what they're asking. The three embrace in a group hug. It became a poly movie here because it was no longer a business arrangement, and it wasn't even really a Vee anymore, in spite of who is having sex with whom. Even if, sexually, the arrangement is still two gay men and a single mother, the inclusion of Simon as a parental participant made this, to me, a poly family. It wasn't a gay couple and a single mother, and it wasn't a gay man with his lover, and his baby-mama as two arms in a Vee. It was a family of three parents. And that made it poly in my eyes. Finally, the parents leave and the movie ends with the three main characters in a group hug, watching the parents go, with Wai-Tung in the middle. Even though this movie ended happily with a baby on the way, I do not believe that it falls under the RBAMP fallacy (Relationship Broken Add More People). The group relationship was not hopelessly flawed and only "saved" by the addition of a baby. The group relationship actually worked just fine. At first, it was little more than a business arrangement, but the characters grew closer together as they lived together. The conflict came from outside, from the parents, who represented all of society and the social disapproval of alternative relationships. Once there was honest communication, and once the family was able to stand on its own and the parents left, things worked out just fine. This movie touched me because I could relate to each of the characters, at different times in my life. I remember when I was too afraid to tell my parents about being poly. I know how stressful it is to not be acknowledged by my partner because he's afraid to tell his family about me. I also know, even though I disapprove of the lie, how to feel support and compassion for my partner and to aid him in the deception, for his sake. And, I know how it feels to have a crush on someone who doesn't return my feelings, and to be so poor and so out of options, that a business marriage seems like a perfectly reasonable solution. This is yet another one of those fuzzy-border poly-ish situations. I enjoyed the movie, and I recommend watching it. polyamory; polyamorous; poly; polya; polyam; poly-ish; nonmonogamy; non-monogamy; ethical non-monogamy; consensual non-monogamy; ENM; CNM; couple privilege; triad; vee; mmf; relationship; polycule; throuple; thruple; gay; queer; LGBTQ; LGBTQIA+; movie review /episode/index/show/polymoviereviews/id/5541819

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