In the Gay Film ‘Throuple,’ Three is Most Definitely a Crowd
The gay rom-com "Throuple" dips a toe into non-monogamy with smarts and sensitivity but stays too close to the surface.
It takes two to tango, with good reason — add one, and the footwork gets way more intricate, to say nothing of where all the other parts go. An adventurous couple and an enthusiastic third try out their footwork, and stumble through the dance, in the Brooklyn-set queer indie Throuple, a notable feature debut for director Greyson Horst.
Michael Doshier wrote the script and stars as perpetually single singer-songwriter Michael, who lives too co-dependently with best friend and fellow musician Tristan (Tristan Carter-Jones). She’s getting more and more serious with her girlfriend Abby (Jess Gabor), so, essentially, Michael’s already playing third wheel in their relationship.
Then, while working the merch table for Tristan’s band Dakota Jones at one of their club gigs, Michael meets cute, married gay couple Georgie (Stanton Plummer-Cambridge) and Connor (Tommy Heleringer).
After some flirty banter — cheekily subtitled since they’re at a loud rock show — Georgie and Connor take him home to their gorgeous triplex, and the trio live happily ever after, the end. Well, no, they go back to Michael’s place.
The film indulges them a brief, blue-tinted ménage à trois, and from there, the trio has some difficulty getting in sync. Michael says he’s seeking real love, but admits he doesn’t know much about being in a relationship. “How do you fall in love?” he asks Georgie and Connor that first night.
Fortunately for him, Georgie and Connor — who do live in an amazing home — share an answer, and generally respond with level-headed care to all of his questions. Depicted as the most open and considerate threesome-exploring, interracial, inter-national couple any third could hope for, they hold the most appeal in this romance. Plummer-Cambridge and Heleringer generate more chemistry as a twosome, to be honest.
Doshier, on the other hand, does not convincingly portray all the feelings we’re told Michael is supposedly feeling, adding dissonance to the intended conflict. When one hubby confesses he wants Michael all to himself, and suggests his husband should see other people and find his own separate fling, a fourth guy, Mac (Taylor Turner), joins the dance, and the complicated choreography gets even more complicated, in theory.
In practice, the film undermines its own daring by spending more time on these guys talking about whether they want to be in a throuple than showing them actually being a throuple. Rather than living it and experiencing those complications, they stay hovering in the preceding moment of hashing out their needs and boundaries and insecurities.
Also, Doshier’s Michael, positioned as the fulcrum of this configuration, is not as magnetic or funny as he’s written to be. In one scene, someone lustfully throws him against a wall, pulls his clothes off, and kisses him hungrily, and the resulting erotic charge could maybe power a penlight.
The sex scenes are not Horst’s directorial strong suit, although he paces the movie well, and makes engaging use of split-screen, and the vibrant cinematography by Martín Blanco. In the visuals, and especially on the soundtrack, the movie presents a colorful showcase for this real-life community of queer artists — including Dakota Jones, Softee (whose track “Oh No” turns up in an amusing drag number), and Doshier’s group Darlin! The Band.
Several live performances, shot on location in Brooklyn clubs, serve as plot or background in the central story, helping ground the film in a pulsing scene and nightlife. Yet, more of that energy needed to flow into the marquee romance, which, by the end, seems permanently preparing for liftoff without ever fully launching.
Throuple (★★☆☆☆) is now playing at Quad Cinemas in New York and at Lumiere Music Hall in Beverly Hills and will be available for streaming via VOD later this spring. Visit www.dekkoo.com.
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