Can a movie set in the '60s and filmed in the '90s really feature a polyamorous quad? Joreth reviews The Blood Oranges for a little-seen poly structure to see if there is any polyamory in it at all.
"Husband and wife Cyril and Fiona explore new ground and new relationships when they take a vacation in the tropics. While on holiday, the pair meets another couple, Hugh and Catherine, and their three children. Relationships become intertwined when Cyril and Fiona lose their inhibitions and seek sexual intimacy with Hugh and Catherine in this erotic drama."
So Netflix says. It sounded pretty promising, and yeah, I think this fits under the "poly-ish" heading. Cyril and Fiona are clearly in an open marriage with both of them openly supportive of each others' interests. Honestly, though, I was surprised to see that this movie was made in 1999. It just felt like another '60s sexual revolution type of film, not the least of which was a slightly predatory personality from Fiona and a pseudo-sex cult leader attitude from Cyril, but also it just kind of looked like it - the cinematography and lack of a soundtrack, I think.
Here's what I liked about the movie:
Here's what I didn't like about the movie:
I like serious dramas, but I'm really picky about them. I don't tend to like movies that I describe as "very French" - filled with unnecessary angst and smoking and existential ennui and desolation. Unfortunately, in movies that explore alternative sexuality, if it's a drama and not a comedy or something uplifting, I too often find it's one of these types of dramas. Such was this movie for me. I didn't like the movie, but that's based solely on personal taste. One might say that I have no taste, since I'd rather be watching cheesy '80s sitcoms, so there you go.
I'm extremely character-driven in my entertainment preferences and I just didn't like the characters. I found Cyril to be pompous, elitist, and blind to his own privilege, even if I happened to appreciate his understanding that possession should not be part of interpersonal relationships. I thought Fiona was selfish, predatory, and naively idealistic. Catherine, I just felt sorry for and wished she would grow a backbone.
And Hugh! I have no idea why anyone liked Hugh. He was controlling, possessive, self-righteous, arrogant, dismissive, condescending, and filled with disgust. There is one scene in particular (that I won't describe so as to not give away spoilers) where he is such a hateful asshole that I immediately disliked every other character just because they overlooked Hugh's behaviour and attitudes. Even after he did something that I would have found unforgivable, it was everyone else's primary desire to make him feel better and keep him a part of the family.
But they were trying to build a strong family, and for that, I have to give this movie credit ... or at least say that it's a poly-ish movie. Cyril and Fiona were not the typical movie couple, where the guy wants some hot chick & talks his wife into it. They both seemed equally enamored of the other couple & welcomed them and their children into their home. Cyril in particular tried very hard to reach out to the children and soothe the oldest, who noticed something going on and seemed resentful. Cyril and Fiona both did everything in their power to help Catherine during her own time of emotional crisis without putting their own relationship above everything else.
So, I'd recommend this movie if dramas are your thing and you want to see a poly movie that doesn't end with polyamory destroying everyone's lives and, in fact, the polyamory is beneficial to providing an emotional support structure in difficult times.
www.polyishmoviereviews.com
How well does this particular fan recommendation hold up to Joreth's poly critique?
Sometimes I think that maybe I'm actually speaking a different language from everyone else, and maybe I have some kind of universal translator or babelfish so that I can't tell, but that the translator is buggy or slightly off in some ways. Because people don't seem to use words in the same way that I do. Even with a dictionary, people use words differently, and I find that I am constantly having semantics arguments because we can't discuss a topic until we are all on the same page about what the words we are using mean.
One of those words is polyamory. I'm a pretty big proponent of using the definition of a word that the person who made up the word uses. In some cases, I think the Argument from Authority is a good one. If you invented or coined a term, then you get to decide what it means. This is even more important, to me, the younger the word is. And if the word was invented or coined within the same generation (i.e. roughly 30-ish years) and the coiners are still alive, then there shouldn't be any debate about "living languages" and so forth.
So, to me, polyamory is about having or wanting multiple simultaneous romantic relationships in which all parties consent to the arrangement. That means that they all know about it and agree to it willingly, not grudgingly. If you don't say yes, it's not consent. If you are coerced, it's not consent. If someone uses their position of authority over you, it's not consent. If you are not aware of any other options, it's not consent. If you are not allowed the opportunity to back out, it's not consent. And so on. Polyamory is also, to me, more about building intentional families (even if some of those relatives are "extended" relatives) than in experiencing sexual encounters (also explicit in the definition - a word's definition is not necessarily limited solely to it's literal translation, the intent and cultural context of a word is also taken into account).
So when someone suggests a movie to me that they claim has polyamory in it, I am now highly dubious about that claim. I have been recommended all manner of cheating and swinging and other non-monogamous movies, but very rarely do I find actual polyamory in these films. Every so often, a cheating movie might make it into my Poly-ish Movie List because I believe from the context of the story that it would be polyamorous if not for the circumstances, like the era or culture, that prevents the characters from openly declaring their relationships that are, nonetheless, loving (like Same Time, Next Year) - I basically feel that the characters are poly but possibly trapped somewhen/somewhere that they can't express it properly. Many times, it's hard for me to really quantify why a particular borderline movie is poly and why this other one isn't. It usually boils down to tone, and a vague sense of "moralizing" that I may or may not get from the storytellers.
This was the problem I had with The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I kept getting told that it was a poly movie, but there was just something wrong with its tone. Tomas is a philanderer who seems to be afraid of commitment and keeps his emotional entanglements to a minimum. Basically, he has sex with lots of women a few times and drops them when they start becoming "serious". Except for one woman, Sabina, who basically seems to have the same outlook as Tomas, in that she hightails it outta there as soon as a guy starts getting "serious" about her. They appear to have a mutual respect in addition to their mutual attraction and mutual passion because of their shared interest in not letting anyone get close to them. Ironically, that barrier that they both erect to keep people out is what ties them together.
Along comes Tereza, an innocent young girl who manages to, as far as I could tell, guilt her way into Tomas' life. She shows up on his doorstep with no place to stay, and so breaks his rule about kicking every girl out before morning. After a whole bunch of these mornings, he finally ends up marrying her.
This is yet another case of a couple who doesn't seem to have anything in common and doesn't seem to like each other very much. At least, the director and/or screenwriter didn't establish their relationship very well. We know what Tomas likes in Tereza - she's female - but we don't really see what brings the two such different characters together. She's young, naive, innocent, apolitical, and extremely jealous and insecure. He's worldly, sophisticated, educated, misogynistic, contemptuous of most people, and a horndog. Other than the fact that their bits fit together, I couldn't understand their relationship at all.
Tomas continues to cheat on Tereza throughout their relationship, and every time Tereza catches him at it, she throws a huge fit that borders on emotional blackmail. I think she's probably depressive to the point of suicidal. Not that I'm defending Tomas either - Tereza doesn't consent to an open relationship, so he's cheating. Period. She deserves better.
There is only one scene that could even possibly be confused for a pro-poly scene. And I have to say that I didn't even interpret the scene this way until someone else suggested it. I still don't see the scene this way, but I can at least see how someone else might.
Tereza suspects Tomas of having an affair with Sabina, who has been introduced to the new Mrs. Tomas as his friend & occasionally socializes with them. So Tereza, who is told to get into photographing naked women if she wants to be taken seriously as a professional photographer, approaches Sabina to be Tereza's first nude model. Sabina, a confident, sexually liberated woman in the '60s, is the only person Tereza knows who might even consider the proposal.
So we have a scene where Tereza photographs Sabina, and eventually Sabina (who is also a photographer and artist) talks Tereza into posing nude for her in return. The two women, who have before been very awkward together, gain some sort of comfort and familiarity with each other through this mutual nude photography session.
I didn't see how this was poly, really. The argument was made that it was basically two metamours who had finally reached out to each other and were able to get past the jealousy to see each other maybe as how their mutual partner could see them. The reason why I didn't interpret the scene this way is because Tereza had only suspected Sabina as being Tomas' lover (he never confirmed) and neither woman spoke of anything relationship-oriented at all. So maybe they did get past some of their jealousy and learned to see each other as people, and maybe this was a bonding, and even a learning moment for both of them. But it was still cheating and still a secret and Tereza still never approved of Tomas' philandering, and the two women never saw each other again on screen.
This movie was not about a poly vee. This was a political commentary on the war in Europe and the Soviet invasion of Czecheslovakia, using the characters as vehicles for the commentary. The movie was brilliantly made, using real footage and photographs from the invasion itself, as chronicled by art students at the university at the time, and staging the characters on the sets to flip back and forth seamlessly between the real archival footage and the movie. This was the first and best comprehensive collection of the record of the invasion ever made.
This movie was based on the book by the same name, which is also widely touted as a brilliant piece of literature. It was critically acclaimed, although, like any book-based movie, many were disappointed with the conversion to film. So I recommend this movie if history and foreign films and high-brow media are your thing. I just didn't feel that it was particularly poly.
***SPOILERS***
Tomas and Tereza eventually settle down when Tereza convinces him to leave the city (and, hence, his ready supply of willing adulterers) and live in the country, and they seem to be happily monogamous for a time. So when a guy who can't remain sexually fidelitous is finally able to only by removing his access to other women, and when the couple is shown as finally happy when said other women are removed from the picture, I have a hard time accepting the badge of "polyamory" or even "poly-ish" that the movie has been given. It comes too close to "open relationships are a train-wreck and everyone is happier when they are monogamous" to me.
Sabina does appear to have remained a close friend of Tomas, right up until the end, but even she was removed from his reach, and she had to love him from afar. She also proclaimed herself as "their closest friend", meaning a close friend to both Tomas and Tereza, but "close friend" from across the globe and not having seen or spoken to them in years is really tough for me to stretch into "poly".
This is one of the few artsy-foreign films that I didn't dislike for being too artsy & foreign, and I'd like to read the book. I might have liked the movie better if I had just come across it on my own instead of having it recommended to me as a potential poly film, because I watched it through a filter of hopes and expectations of poly content. I will not be including this on the Poly-ish Movie List, but it was an interesting movie and I'm glad I saw it.
Can Spike Lee's inaugural film really be a poly movie as everyone claims? Joreth watches this groundbreaking movie to find out!
There's something about student films and classic French movies that just do not work for me. Maybe it's the penchant for black and white even in a color era, or maybe it's the frequent complete lack of musical score or soundtrack, or maybe it's the excruciatingly slow pace and shitty acting, or maybe it's all those years I spent as a film student, forced to watch the painfully "artistic" films by my peers and dragged to pretentious indie art houses to see confusing avant garde movies. I don't know, whatever it is, they're just not my cuppa tea. And Spike Lee's debut movie fits squarely in the middle of that je ne sais quoi that makes my eyes glaze over. But you might have different tastes.
She's Gotta Have It is another Netflix recommendation that I was expecting to be misleading at best. Plus, the black community, at least as it's portrayed in pop media, has never been sympathetic towards multiple partnerships, especially if it's the woman with the multiple partners.
Nola is in love with 3 very different men. At first I thought it would be another cheating movie where the girl would eventually find The One (who, of course, was not one of the guys she was fucking, because sex is dirty, or something). But then I discovered that she was honest about her "friends", as she calls them, so I thought it was more like Cafe Au Lait, complete with detestable characters who didn't actually seem to like each other.
It did feel a lot like a Brooklyn version of that movie - none of the guys liked each other, I didn't like any of them, and no one had any redeeming features to make me understand why she liked them or why they liked her. I kept waiting for her to get pregnant so they could have a Dysfunctionally Ever After ending.
But then I noticed something. I noticed that the arguments the guys used to try and convince Nola to be monogamous were the exact same shit I got over the years from cowboys. When you're not monogamous living in a monogamous world, and you don't know anyone else like you to date and can only draw from the mono pool, this movie is exactly what you might get.
I'm having trouble categorizing this one. On the one hand, she's honest about her multiple partners and claims to love them. On the other hand, they hate each other and are all competing to be "the winner" - the sole object for her affection. On yet another hand, this is very much what it feels like for some of us to be poly (or something not monogamous) without a community or support or understanding from anyone since no one else is like us. On the final hand, it was yet another movie with characters who didn't really like their dating partners.
I think I want to include this on the Poly-ish Movie List because I think a lot of polys go through similar arguments before they find a community, and I think it's a valid part of the broader story of what it's like to be poly. But this was not a story of a poly relationship. If anything, it was the story of a poly-ish woman stuck in a mono world.