maximefo
Joined May 2021
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Reviews31
maximefo's rating
This film is a great surprise and quite a remarkable story. I thought I knew where the plot was going, but the director did a great job at entertaining and captivating the audience. For instance, humor often happens when you expect things to get dark and violent. Of the three main characters, the most mature is actually the youngest (Jeremy is in high school and 15 years younger than Beth and Steve).
Love stories often focus on the passion and obstacles at the beginning, the passion phase, but very few films discuss the next, more challenging phase: how does a couple recover from the passionate phase without falling into the routine and growing bitterness of living with a leash around your neck. Here we see a couple struggling with the end of desire and, maybe more tragically, the end of communication. Every time they try to have a sincere, deep, conversation about their malaise, Beth and Steve prefer to avoid words that should be said and discussed. Is it the end of their story or just a critical phase that requires their commitment and reinvention?
Meanwhile, Jeremy appears like the poetic touch of light that turns a dull routine into a reawakening. He is smart, inspired and refreshing. He reminded me of Timothée Chalamet in Miss Stevens.
Steve's reaction to this love story between Beth and Jeremy might be the best part of the film. The film blurs the lines between ménage à trois and chosen family, it becomes a messy but hypnotic workshop. By the way, I loved discovering the song Hypnotic Tango in the soundtrack.
Overall, great acting, fierce plot, stunning photography. I highly recommend Beth + Jeremy and Steve.
Love stories often focus on the passion and obstacles at the beginning, the passion phase, but very few films discuss the next, more challenging phase: how does a couple recover from the passionate phase without falling into the routine and growing bitterness of living with a leash around your neck. Here we see a couple struggling with the end of desire and, maybe more tragically, the end of communication. Every time they try to have a sincere, deep, conversation about their malaise, Beth and Steve prefer to avoid words that should be said and discussed. Is it the end of their story or just a critical phase that requires their commitment and reinvention?
Meanwhile, Jeremy appears like the poetic touch of light that turns a dull routine into a reawakening. He is smart, inspired and refreshing. He reminded me of Timothée Chalamet in Miss Stevens.
Steve's reaction to this love story between Beth and Jeremy might be the best part of the film. The film blurs the lines between ménage à trois and chosen family, it becomes a messy but hypnotic workshop. By the way, I loved discovering the song Hypnotic Tango in the soundtrack.
Overall, great acting, fierce plot, stunning photography. I highly recommend Beth + Jeremy and Steve.
What a great, powerful, brave film.
Simple, though. Two men have a conversation on a bed after a hookup. I read it was made with a very small budget, which makes sense after watching the film. But it does not make it cheap, quite the contrary.
The conversation is like a river, and watching the film feels like taking a cruise (sometimes bumpy), and being witness to something happening: the other side of intimacy. The first side happens before the film: they meet in bar, flirt, feel a connection, and then go home and enjoy a fierce, memorable moment of sex. Raw, unprotected sex. This is already a huge moment of shared intimacy. Could it get any better afterwards? Post coitum animal triste?
The film is about the fragile, intense, vertiginous building of another kind of intimacy: getting to know each other after having already "known" (in the biblical sense) each other. Brian and Bryan are very different in many ways, but they share the same name (well, almost: is the Y of Bryan the equivalent of the lacanian object petit a?), the same dream and the same loneliness. The title of the film captures very well the tension at stake here: they are together and alone at the same time. And they talk and talk and talk, hoping to switch from loneliness to the wonder of a shared loneliness with a special, inspirational other.
The film addresses many topics, especially AIDS, first love stories, literature, ethics and identities. The actors do a great job and the photography conveys a dramatic chiaroscuro. But let's remember Bryan's words: although we want everything to be black or white, we need to learn to embrace various shades of grey (not exactly his words, my rephrasing). So grey it is.
This film could be made into a play (it reminded me of In the solitude of cotton fields, by Koltès), and I would love to watch both a prequel and a sequel of Together Alone. Although it was directed in a unique and dramatic context (in 1991, when being diagnosed with HIV felt like a death sentence), it did not age at all because it raises existential issues in a universal way.
Simple, though. Two men have a conversation on a bed after a hookup. I read it was made with a very small budget, which makes sense after watching the film. But it does not make it cheap, quite the contrary.
The conversation is like a river, and watching the film feels like taking a cruise (sometimes bumpy), and being witness to something happening: the other side of intimacy. The first side happens before the film: they meet in bar, flirt, feel a connection, and then go home and enjoy a fierce, memorable moment of sex. Raw, unprotected sex. This is already a huge moment of shared intimacy. Could it get any better afterwards? Post coitum animal triste?
The film is about the fragile, intense, vertiginous building of another kind of intimacy: getting to know each other after having already "known" (in the biblical sense) each other. Brian and Bryan are very different in many ways, but they share the same name (well, almost: is the Y of Bryan the equivalent of the lacanian object petit a?), the same dream and the same loneliness. The title of the film captures very well the tension at stake here: they are together and alone at the same time. And they talk and talk and talk, hoping to switch from loneliness to the wonder of a shared loneliness with a special, inspirational other.
The film addresses many topics, especially AIDS, first love stories, literature, ethics and identities. The actors do a great job and the photography conveys a dramatic chiaroscuro. But let's remember Bryan's words: although we want everything to be black or white, we need to learn to embrace various shades of grey (not exactly his words, my rephrasing). So grey it is.
This film could be made into a play (it reminded me of In the solitude of cotton fields, by Koltès), and I would love to watch both a prequel and a sequel of Together Alone. Although it was directed in a unique and dramatic context (in 1991, when being diagnosed with HIV felt like a death sentence), it did not age at all because it raises existential issues in a universal way.
The topic of ménage à trois, or throuple, has inspired many films, including the famous Jules et Jim, but most of the illustrations are based on two men and a woman (anyone remembers Threesome, directed by Andrew Fleming?), and less often two women and a man. So what Throuple adds is an original contribution with a throuple made of three gay men.
But a throuple might hide another one: Michael is trying to find his voice and identify his desires with a married couple, but he has also been in a "relationship" with his best friend, Tristan, who is on the verge of getting engaged with Abby.
The film is then a double illustration of how often 3 becomes 2 + 1, or 2 against 1, and the dynamics of power confuse feelings and desires. Insecurity, jealousy, blurring the lines between love and friendship, partner and friend with benefits. The possibility of chaos is real, but sticking to the norms feels alienating.
The photography is audacious and inspired, I thought the split screen worked very well and that the Brooklyn vibe felt authentic. Nice soundtrack and uplifting ending. Rimbaud once wrote that "Love has to be reinvented", and it sounds like Throuple is a solid contribution to this workshop.
But a throuple might hide another one: Michael is trying to find his voice and identify his desires with a married couple, but he has also been in a "relationship" with his best friend, Tristan, who is on the verge of getting engaged with Abby.
The film is then a double illustration of how often 3 becomes 2 + 1, or 2 against 1, and the dynamics of power confuse feelings and desires. Insecurity, jealousy, blurring the lines between love and friendship, partner and friend with benefits. The possibility of chaos is real, but sticking to the norms feels alienating.
The photography is audacious and inspired, I thought the split screen worked very well and that the Brooklyn vibe felt authentic. Nice soundtrack and uplifting ending. Rimbaud once wrote that "Love has to be reinvented", and it sounds like Throuple is a solid contribution to this workshop.