Can Woody Allen handle polyamory?  Joreth reviews Whatever Works for a polyamorous sub-plot of a ménage à trois triad or a "household of three".

 

Whatever Works by Woody Allen, was recommended to me by my best friend. I'm not a Woody Allen fan. I get awfully tired of his neurotic-old-man-gets-hot-younger-woman schtick that seems to be the only kind of relationship he is capable of writing about. But my best friend told me that this movie has a functional poly relationship as sub-characters and that I should watch it.

So I did.

I was pleasantly surprised. The main character IS a neurotic old man who gets a hot younger woman, but I liked it anyway. Boris is a cranky, atheist, nihilist, genius, egomaniac, and other than the nihilism part getting tiresome rather early, I actually kinda liked his character. He complained about religion and foolish people, which I can TOTALLY get behind. His constant dismissive and condescending attitude towards others, assuming that everyone is "dumber" than him because he's a genius, got annoying, but otherwise, I found I had a lot in common with the old crank.

[inserted movie clip of description of Boris]

I'll have to spoil some of the plot in order to introduce the poly sub-plot, but I'll try to leave off as many details about the main story as possible and I'll avoid the ending. The short story is that the poly sub-plot really is poly.

One day, Boris comes home to find a pretty, homeless girl from Mississippi on his doorstep begging for food. Against his better judgement, he lets Melody come inside to eat, where she weasels her way into free room and board for the next month. She's a stereotypical "dumb blonde", cheerful, and religious. And yet she manages to develop a crush on cranky old Boris anyway.

He resists her for a while, but eventually she grows on him and they end up married, as people who have nothing in common and don't seem to like each other much seem to do in movies. About a year later, her fundie Christian mother shows up on their doorstep, prayin' to Jaysus and trying to save her daughter from the sinful life in New York and marriage (that she refuses to acknowledge) to a man old enough to be her daughter's grandfather. We find out that Marrietta (Melody's mom) was recently dumped by her husband, John, for her best friend and she is now homeless, broke, and divorced.

As she plots to find another man for her daughter, Marietta ends up getting introduced to one of Boris' friends, a professor of philosophy named Brockman (of course) who finds her physically attractive in spite of her out-of-touch religious views. He asks her out on a date, where she gets drunk and shows him pictures of Melody as a child pageant queen. Brockman thinks her pictures have a "primitive" brilliance to them and convinces Marietta to show them to an art critic friend. Brockman also seduces Marietta and all her religious views fly right out the window.

The art critic friend, Howard, falls in love with Marietta's "primitive" photography, and also with Marietta, and the two men move in with her in a happy threesome, where the fundie religious southern Christian turns into a hedonistic, polyamorous, artist living in New York.

[inserted movie clips describing the triad]

So I liked the movie because the protagonist was a cranky, atheist, son of a bitch, and the poly triad had no drama or issues whatsoever. Marietta discovered much more of herself through her relationship with her two male partners, which is exactly what happens in good poly relationships, or any complex and healthy relationship, really. The relationship worked and the movie ended with the triad still functioning and happy.

I recommend the movie for a bit of light viewing, and it definitely deserves to be on the poly list, even though the poly family is not the main plot focus.

 

polyamory; polyamorous; poly; polya; polyam; poly-ish; nonmonogamy; non-monogamy; ethical non-monogamy; consensual non-monogamy; ENM; CNM; open relationship; triad; vee; threesome; ménage à trois; polyandry; mfm; relationship; polycule; ethical slut; throuple; thruple; movie review