Threesome

An exercise in cinematic symbiotic concupiscence, or just a rehashing of Gregg Araki's Three Bewildered People in the Night? Whichever, this debut from director Fleming beats the odds and manages to be a far more intelligent film than its marketing campaign would have you believe. It's the story of three college students flung together by a computing error into one dorm suite. The catch is, it's two guys (Baldwin, Charles)… and a girl (Boyle). Boyle's character -- her non-gender specific name is Alex, hence the university's error -- is at first aghast at the situation, and asks her two male roomies to give up their rooms and move out. Eventually, though, she comes to like the quiet, intellectual Eddy and tolerate the testosterone-fueled, brawny Stuart. They eat out, they talk, and unsurprisingly, she falls for Eddy, while Stuart falls for her. The catch? Eddy, a virgin, isn't too sure he likes girls. To his merit, Fleming handles the sexually tense storyline with intelligence and a deft wit; we're given enough time to get to know the characters here that we sure enough begin to care about them. It's a painful situation for all three of our musketeers, and Fleming, thankfully, acknowledges that, instead of burying the edginess beneath a pall of collegiate shenanigans. All three actors are fine in their roles, but it's ex-Twin Peaker Boyle who really walks away with the film in her role as the pseudo-intellectual drama major who gets off at the library as Charles reads her the “big words” from a Hawthorne novel. Towards the end of the film, Fleming drops the ball a couple of times (you know a film like this is in trouble when you hear the phrase, “Wait two minutes. If the stick turns light blue… ”), but up to that point it's a well-constructed, hilarious, touching, and thoroughly sexy Bizarre Love Triangle. Even if Gregg Araki's done it before.