A movie with the number 3 in the title can't be all bad can it?  Joreth reviews Trois, a Netflix recommendation about a unicorn-hunting threesome.   Content Note: This review contains the sardonic use of ableist language & possibly sex-negative sex worker language intending to mock the sorts of writers who use "crazy" as a scapegoat and their poor depiction of mental illness as well as their obviously one-dimensional and low opinion of sex work. I am using the language to describe what the *writers* of these sorts of behaviours think and by using these words, I am intending to show my disapproval and contempt for this viewpoint in my tone. I apologize if my intention does not come across or if readers are unable to read or listen because of the language.

Is it possible for someone with an American accent to say "ménage à trois" and not sound pretentious? I have yet to hear it.

While adding Poly movies to my queue, Netflix recommends "similar" movies to watch. Most of the ones recommended on the basis of poly movies sound pretty awful, but if there's a chance it's a hidden poly movie, I add it to the queue too. Trois sounded like one of the awful ones, and I wasn't disappointed.

The summary says:

"Seeking to put excitement into his humdrum sex life, young Atlanta attorney Jermain Davis pressures his reluctant wife, Jasmine, to engage in a ménage à trois with curvaceous bisexual stripper Jade Owens. But the choices made by each of them soon expose deep wounds and come back to haunt them in this steamy indie thriller.

Let me tell you just how bad this movie was. It was so bad, that the movie isn't even over yet and I've already started writing this review.

This was not a poly movie. This was a cautionary tale against non-monogamy, against same-sex desires, and against kink. This was a third-rate Fatal Attraction. In addition to it being completely sex-negative, it was also poorly written.  As per my usual pattern, if the movie sucks and I don't think you should bother, I'm going to spoiler the hell out of it because fuck this movie.

Jasmine is a young wife, married to an up-and-coming lawyer, who has just applied to grad school. She works with battered women and has regular nightmares about her own abusive relationship. Jasmine wants nothing more than to have her husband hold her.

Jermaine wants to have a threesome with his wife, but he insists that he just wants to share something "freaky" with his wife and that it's not about the other woman at all. He tries to explain that it's not about the other woman, that he's just trying to be honest about his sexuality and he thinks his marriage is strong enough to handle anything. Considering it's a movie, I thought that was a pretty good start, in spite of the whole forgetting-the-other-woman-is-a-person-too thing. But then they both make one mistake after another.

Jasmine just won't talk to Jermaine. She won't tell him what her nightmares are about, she won't tell him that she doesn't want sex but that she wants to be held, and she won't tell him how his request makes her feel. She just gets mad at the request.

Eventually, Jasmine talks to her best friend about the threesome idea, and her friend actually convinces her that, not only can threesomes be fun, but that it's Jasmine's duty to her husband. The scene with each spouse talking to their respective best friends about their motivations is like textbook sexism - the dialog is absolutely classic Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus - the guys just want some sex and the women just want to be held. I swear, these writers have never actually TALKED to women.  It's my not-so-secret hypothesis that most people who become script writers do so because they don't have real connections with real people.  So they make up shit based on what they *think* other people do and say and feel, without really knowing anything about real people.  Movies like this are why I suspect that.

Later that night, Jasmine wakes up from one of her nightmares about being beat by her ex-boyfriend, but when Jermaine tries to get her to open up and talk to him, Jasmine agrees to the threesome "for her man", mostly to distract him from probing about her secret abusive past.  Jermaine immediately drops the subject of nightmares and why his wife won't confide in him and the next day has his buddy fix him up with a stripper he knows. Yeah, we can see where this is going.

Next, we meet the stripper, Jade. Our introduction to her is at a bar, drunk, and her baby-daddy shows up with a subpoena to take her kid away from her.

The writer went out of their way to set up Jade as a "crazy bitch".

So, the not-so-happy couple meets up with the "crazy stripper" and they have a threesome. The next morning, Jasmine wakes up, regretting her night and now harboring fears that she might be gay, or "freaky", because apparently both options are horrible. As Jasmine gets weird about their threesome, Jermaine confides in his buddy that the threesome was great, but the aftermath wasn't so great. In the process of trying to figure out what happened, the buddy ends up sowing suspicion in Jermaine's mind about his wife and Jade. So Jermaine stays out half the night drinking.

Meanwhile, Jasmine is back at home having battered nightmares and wakes up to find herself alone. For some reason, this vanilla, likable, popular woman doesn't call up her family or friends for support. She calls up the stripper from the freaky weekend that made her feel all confused and upset and goes out with her. So when Jermaine finally comes home, he finds an empty house.

The next morning, after calling Jasmine's dozens of friends looking for her, he finally thinks to call Jade as a last-ditch effort and learns that his wife did, indeed, turn to Jade for support, which only cements his suspicions ... of what, I'm not entirely sure - that Jasmine is cheating on her husband with the woman her husband insisted she sleep with?  But Jermaine gets jealous, and when Jasmine finally comes home, he begs her to promise him that nothing happened between Jasmine and Jade and that nothing WILL happen between them.

So, now that things could have been settled, we go back to Jade, who needs a babysitter for her kid because she's about to lose the kid in her custody battle, so she can't go out hitting the bars and leaving her 4-year old son at home alone anymore ... at least until the court hearing is over. So her boyfriend suggests that Jade ask Jasmine to babysit, since Jasmine "seems like a homebody". Jade calls up Jasmine, but Jermaine answers. Instead of being polite and honest, Jade demands to speak to Jasmine, telling Jermaine that it's none of his business why she's calling and that Jasmine is a grown woman who can make up her own mind. Yeah, like that's gonna go over well.

Of course, Jermaine tells Jade to leave them alone or he'll put in a bad word for her with the judge in her custody case. So Jade throws a huge, screaming tantrum, throwing things, and pretty much destroying her own house. Her boyfriend comes out of the bathroom to find out what the problem is, and when he attempts to calm her down, Jade pulls a gun on him, aimed at his dick, and tells him to get out. By now, I'm rooting for the baby-daddy to win the kid in court.

Next we see a series of increasingly aggressive "pranks" being pulled on Jermaine. The Chinese food he orders for a business lunch is actually boxes of worms, his car gets egged and his tires get slashed, stuff like that. One night, Jermaine and Jasmine are taking a romantic bubble bath, and we see a shadow outside of the bathroom window. The next morning, Jermaine finds one of Jade's hairpins in the trampled rose bushes. So Jermaine pulls some strings, and the judge orders the child to be made a ward of the state until either Jade gets a steady job, or the baby-daddy stops travelling (he's a baseball player).

Stupidly foolishly, Jermaine is waiting outside the courthouse so that Jade can see him when she comes running and screaming outside, scratching up her face and neck in her grief.

Next, a massive fucking rattlesnake lunges up out of the foot-well of Jermaine's car while he's driving, sending him to the hospital. So Jermaine puts a restraining order on Jade as soon as he's out of the hospital. While he's at home recovering, Jasmine gets a special delivery VHS tape of her husband fucking some girl in Jasmine's own car.

Now, at this point, I was already on my laptop and writing this review, so the couple of clues before this point caught my attention, but I didn't put it together until this now. How would some unknown stripper have gotten into a legal office to place the stupid trite and cliché pseudo-ransom-font threatening letter in Jermaine's inbox during business hours without anyone noticing? How would she have known enough about their business lunch to have set up the whole worm thing? And now, how could this woman, who was only introduced to them the night of their threesome, have gotten a video tape of something illicit that supposedly happened years before*? Hmm, could it be that the writers only gave us a totally "psycho patsy" to throw us off the trail؟

So now Jasmine has had enough and she wants a divorce. But Jermaine begs her not to leave him, and to prove that he knows he was wrong, he'll leave her instead. And go right over to Jade's house to beat her unconscious! Jermaine comes back to beg Jasmine to just stay with him for that night, when lightening flashes, rain comes pouring down, and the fucking lights go out.

Seriously.

They hear a noise in the other room, so Jermaine goes out to investigate. Someone in all black with a black mask jumps him and a fight ensues. Jasmine tries to call the cops, but the phone is dead, so she grabs the gun hidden under the bed (do all writers just have no experience with firearms? Why else do they give people guns with no establishing story for why white collar pacifists would have a gun and make them hide them under the mattress? And revolvers? Really؟).

So Jasmine bursts out of the bedroom with a gun, telling the bad guy to back off (don't pull out a gun as a defense unless you're going to use it!), giving him time to pull of his mask and reveal ... Jasmine's old wife-beater boyfriend ... and Jermaine's "buddy" from work who set the whole threesome thing up in the first place.

Next follows the usual bad-guy exposition where everyone has weapons but no one is using them because the bad guy has to explain why he's doing what he's doing and to take credit for every misdeed in the movie.  He told Jasmine years before, while she lay on the floor, bleeding and that if she ever left him, he'd "find her ass".  Jasmine is so distraught over seeing him again, that she DROPS THE GUN and just starts crying.

Jermaine goes for Eric's gun, and while they wrestle, Jasmine finally notices that she's dropped her gun and picks it up. Of course, there's a gunshot while the camera isn't pointed at anyone, so we are supposed to sit there and wonder who got shot for a moment. Of course, it's Jasmine. So Jermaine lets go of Eric while Eric goes completely off his rocker, randomly pointing the gun at his own head and then to Jermaine, and back again, screaming something about how they all have to die now.

So, rather than picking up the gun that Jasmine has dropped again, Jermaine stands up, takes his fucking shirt off, and screams "you wanna kill me? Go ahead and kill me motherfucker!" while Eric stands there looking "crazy". Another gunshot, again while the camera isn't on anyone, and surprise surprise, Eric is shot.

As he falls down, he reveals barking moonbat Jade standing behind him screaming "you thought you could put your hands on me and I wouldn't come and getcha?" But Jermaine promises to do anything if Jade will just call 911 for him. So she agrees, but discovers that the phone is still dead. So Jermaine tells her that there's a cell phone in the desk drawer (where the hell were the cell phones throughout the rest of the movie, like when Jermaine was trying to find his missing wife‽).

Now the torture is almost over. We're back in the courtroom, where the judge pronounces that Jade is to get her kid back due to "evidence" presented by Jade's new lawyer, Jermaine. Frankly, I think he only traded his wife's life for the kid's life. Jermaine walks towards the exit only to find Jasmine blocking the way. The camera work tries unsuccessfully to hide the height difference between the two characters while they give us more exposition so that we can learn that Jasmine has left her husband, served him with divorce papers, is now setting up her own abuse center, and that Jermaine wants to try and make it "like it used to be" but that Jasmine says it can never be the way it used to be. And she wheels herself out of the courtroom, now disabled from being shot.

Apparently I'm a masochist, because I went to look at the special features and found an alternate ending. And I watched it. Thank goodness they cut that out. So, while Jermaine is on the floor begging his wife not to die, and Jade is looking for the cell phone, Eric is lying dead on the floor. But since this is a movie, we all know that the bad guy never dies the first time. So he gets up and puts his foot on Jermaine's hand when Jermaine notices and goes for the gun on the floor. Eric takes his time aiming his gun at Jermaine's head. He takes exactly the amount of time necessary for Jade to shoot him in the back ... again. So it's not so much an alternate ending as a shoddy horror-movie double-take ending, because everything else is pretty much the same. Eric is still dead, Jasmine is still shot, Jade is still the one who kills Eric, and Jermaine still owes Jade.

*According to the director commentary (yes, I watched it), the video of Jermaine having sex in his wife's car happened within the last couple of weeks, not several years ago, even though that's what Jermaine said when Jasmine got the tape.  Eric, back when we thought he was "Terrance the buddy", actually helped Jermaine hookup with the waitress so that he could be there to secretly tape them in the parking lot.  But the scene where all this happens never got filmed, so the only thing we know about that affair is what Jermaine said about it, which is that it happened after they got married, but "years ago"

Oh my god - this movie is part of a trilogy!  There are two more of these movies out there!  I will not be reviewing them for ya'll - I think it's safe to assume the rest of them are just more of the same.  I wonder if they thought it was clever making a movie called Trois into a trilogy?

So the moral of the story is, if a man says he wants a threesome to "expand and explore his marriage", he's lying - he really just wants permission to fuck another woman; if a woman likes having a threesome, she might be gay or freaky and that's bad; and "you can put yourself out there, but you never know what you're gonna get - people be crazy yo", so don't fuck up your marriage by having a threesome.

By the way, this is the movie that gave me the inspiration for ending my reviews with "where I watch the crap so you don't have to".  You're welcome.

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