Before screenwriter and director Andrew Fleming unleashed his masterpiece The Craft (1996) on audiences, he made the much smaller and far more intimate Threesome (1994). One of the things that’s so appealing about Threesome is that, much in the same vein as The Craft, it deals with a unique social grouping that exists outside of societal norms. While Threesome doesn’t always present its narrative in a sex-positive light, it is fairly progressive for the nineties.
The premise of Threesome feels like standard National Lampoon material. A glitching in a university’s rooming assignments has Alex (Lara Flynn Boyle) rooming with the queer intellectual Eddy (Josh Charles) and the womanizing Stuart (Stephen Baldwin). The material is farcical as Alex falls for Eddy who is drawn to Stuart who is keen on Alex. However things move in a slightly less predictable direction when the three parties involved form an emotional as well as sexual ménage à trois.
Fleming’s script has enough wit to keep the proceedings relatively light throughout Threesome but the edge comes from the writer’s frank depiction of emotional entanglements. More interesting still is that Fleming uses this premise to both validate and equate Eddy’s queer desires with those of his heterosexual counterparts. Even when the threesome deteriorates and Eddy is excluded, Fleming’s film takes great pains not to illegitimatize Eddy’s emotional life.
Threesome, unfortunately, doesn’t have enough material to fill out its 93 minute running time without becoming repetitive. As good as Lara Flynn Boyle and Josh Charles are, Baldwin is equally awful which only adds to the viewer’s awareness of the flimsiness of the plot. If Threesome had merely been an hour long it would have been so much more concise dramatically.
