What’s the worst thing that can come from a threesome? The storied history of cinematic threesomes and group sex rarely end well. Most often, relationships disintegrate and sexual fantasies lose their enchantment. The disappointment most often centers on the sex itself: awkwardness, unexpected jealousy, an uneven distribution of pleasure, basic regret. Chad Hartigan’s new film The Threesome instead asks what’s the most chaotic thing that can come after a male-female-female threesome? Both women getting pregnant, of course.
Connor (Jonah Hauer-King) is approaching his 30s and has no immediate path to settling down and starting a family. He plays liberally and loosely with sexual tension between him and a former co-worker, Olivia (Zoey Deutch), while hanging with his bartending friend at the same place he used to work. Connor and Olivia slept together recently, a first for them both, though they are by no means a couple when they both, simultaneously, seduce Jenny (Ruby Cruz), a graduate student stood up on a date at the restaurant. The weirdest part of the seduction here is Connor’s perplexing choice to spend time at his former place of work. Who does this?
The Threesome is a bit of a black sheep within its subgenre of group sex premised films by beginning with the group play rather than climaxing in it like Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. Hartigan wastes no time getting to the action. The seduction, foreplay, and threesome itself capture the intense and powerful urges of the three participants. Their desire is intoxicated—literally and metaphorically—and the film puts itself in the middle of it, letting their crazed desire almost nudge the lens.
Things begin with Jenny on the left, Olivia in the middle, and Connor on the right. While playing a game of Truth or Dare obviously meant as an excuse for escalation, the two women make out first before Olivia tells Connor to give her the best kiss he’s ever given. As Connor and Jenny finally kiss, Jenny’s out-of-focus face stays in the background of the tongue exchange, clearly aroused herself. The way all three faces are integral to the image makes them equal co-participants in a way usually denied in the actual photography of threesomes. The closeness of the camera, bothersome in some of the more mundane scenes, sells the intensity of arousal. Body parts get hard to track. Whose hands are those? Whose chest is that? Who made that sound? The scene cuts out before things get too intense. Connor wakes up in bed with Jenny and no Olivia. After having sex with Jenny in the shower, he chases Olivia down and they soon after start dating. Then the pregnancies come. Olivia finds out first and decides to parent alongside her new partner. Then Jenny tells Connor, in front of Olivia, that she is pregnant and intends to carry her baby to term. An Uncut Gems level of chaos that spirals from these two revelations.
Deutch, who also helped produce the film, is the most recognizable face involved. For the first time in a long time, she fully puts on her inner-Dakota Johnson with a stern cool-girl leading role in a small budget sexy drama. (The bangs and flat vocal deliveries of both Deutch and Johnson make the comparison too easy). Her role asks the most of her by making her swing across a full emotional register almost every time she is on screen. Cruz also stands out. Her role is much more unassuming than Deutch’s character. There is an ongoing conservative Christian joke about her comparatively more modest lifestyle. The abortion angle is certainly a big part of this. The screenplay, written by Ethan Ogilby (in his first produced script based on a pilot co-written with his wife, a labor & delivery nurse), ultimately respects Jenny’s decision and chooses not to press too far into why she chooses to keep her child. She very well could be a pro-life evangelical; that’s not the point. She makes her choice.
The Threesome is thematically rich for a film with such a sultry premise. Hartigan, who also directed the delightful pandemic-romance Little Fish, asks capital-B big questions about themes like bodily autonomy, early 30s settling-down anxiety, the multifaceted complexities of love as both a choice and an emotion, and what commitment looks like in the face of relational complexity. The threesome disrupted the lives of all three involved, for better and worse, and that disruption creates opportunity for thematic exploration. The only moralizing is limited to the factual reiteration that sex has consequences. There is no such thing as consequence free sex. There is also nothing less sexy than denying that sex can be a big deal.
DIRECTOR: Chad Hartigan; CAST: Zoey Deutch, Jonah Hauer-King, Ruby Cruz; DISTRIBUTOR: Vertical; IN THEATERS: September 5; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 52 min.
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