This sincere, quiet, and apparently low-budget indie _tries_ to explore experiences outside of the strictly monogamous and outside of the strictly heterosexual, and it deserves some props for not taking the easy way out of these issues--but neither is it all that well-made, well-acted, or 100% sure of itself and what it wants to be as an alternative, counter-culture film. It's probably worth watching, but don't prepare yourself to be amazed or blown away.
We meet Marcus and Aaron, an NYC gay-male couple who may or may not be interracial (it's honestly hard to tell and the plot never derives anything out of Marcus's darker, and Aaron's lighter, complexions). After six years together, they're deciding to move toward opening up their relationship without sacrificing their love for one another. We also meet Annie, a rather ditsy twenty-something elementary-school teacher, whose boyfriend, Stan, hooks up with Marcus in what is apparently Stan's first same-sex experience. Stan hasn't admitted to Annie that he's interested in seeing guys sexually. Annie hasn't admitted to Stan that she's also having her own same-sex fling with a fellow teacher named Mandy. And in turn, Marcus isn't admitting it to Aaron that he's falling in love with Stan, despite Marcus's sincere intentions to stay living with and passionately loving Aaron. Further complications, improbably but still rather predictably, ensue.
Everybody reads everybody else's private emails to their paramours. Every scene that should be light and sexy and poignant seems heavy-handed and forced. New Yorkers who could log onto Grindr or Craig's List and have multiple partners within minutes instead encounter the same knot of confused people in what ends up feeling like a very limited, almost claustrophobic version of New York City. One honestly just gives up trying to find believability in repeated, "miraculous" meetings between the same people within a city of millions, in people who _say_ they want an open relationship and then cannot handle the consequences, and in blurred lines between gay and straight that leave one character, Stan, just calling himself "curious." Maybe so, but all of these half-hearted complexities leave viewers less and less curious in this film as it goes on.
The later scenes between Marcus and Aaron seem especially poorly acted, just when we need to understand them and their motivations the most. Mandi's character is subjected to such bizarre hardships as finding out her dying father's arms are getting amputated, just because the writer doesn't seem to know what else to do with her character. Characters keep suggesting they share partners and try threesomes, and if threesomes had actually happened, they probably would have been more interesting, and less strained, than what this movie presents instead.
It deserves props, finally, for not insisting that the heterosexual couples are any happier than the homosexual ones, for not demanding its characters ultimately settle down from their experimental bisexuality, and for not preaching that one can only reach "happily ever after" via conventional monogamy. Its deviations from conventional morality make it an interesting experiment in indie film-making. Better acting, characters whom we know better and care about more, and more of a commitment to actually realizing the non-monogamy these characters think they long for, _would_ have made the experiment more of a success.
We meet Marcus and Aaron, an NYC gay-male couple who may or may not be interracial (it's honestly hard to tell and the plot never derives anything out of Marcus's darker, and Aaron's lighter, complexions). After six years together, they're deciding to move toward opening up their relationship without sacrificing their love for one another. We also meet Annie, a rather ditsy twenty-something elementary-school teacher, whose boyfriend, Stan, hooks up with Marcus in what is apparently Stan's first same-sex experience. Stan hasn't admitted to Annie that he's interested in seeing guys sexually. Annie hasn't admitted to Stan that she's also having her own same-sex fling with a fellow teacher named Mandy. And in turn, Marcus isn't admitting it to Aaron that he's falling in love with Stan, despite Marcus's sincere intentions to stay living with and passionately loving Aaron. Further complications, improbably but still rather predictably, ensue.
Everybody reads everybody else's private emails to their paramours. Every scene that should be light and sexy and poignant seems heavy-handed and forced. New Yorkers who could log onto Grindr or Craig's List and have multiple partners within minutes instead encounter the same knot of confused people in what ends up feeling like a very limited, almost claustrophobic version of New York City. One honestly just gives up trying to find believability in repeated, "miraculous" meetings between the same people within a city of millions, in people who _say_ they want an open relationship and then cannot handle the consequences, and in blurred lines between gay and straight that leave one character, Stan, just calling himself "curious." Maybe so, but all of these half-hearted complexities leave viewers less and less curious in this film as it goes on.
The later scenes between Marcus and Aaron seem especially poorly acted, just when we need to understand them and their motivations the most. Mandi's character is subjected to such bizarre hardships as finding out her dying father's arms are getting amputated, just because the writer doesn't seem to know what else to do with her character. Characters keep suggesting they share partners and try threesomes, and if threesomes had actually happened, they probably would have been more interesting, and less strained, than what this movie presents instead.
It deserves props, finally, for not insisting that the heterosexual couples are any happier than the homosexual ones, for not demanding its characters ultimately settle down from their experimental bisexuality, and for not preaching that one can only reach "happily ever after" via conventional monogamy. Its deviations from conventional morality make it an interesting experiment in indie film-making. Better acting, characters whom we know better and care about more, and more of a commitment to actually realizing the non-monogamy these characters think they long for, _would_ have made the experiment more of a success.