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Miami Herald
January 7, 2006
Exploring family: Miami Beach native’s documentary tells the story of an untraditional relationship
Ana Veciana-Suarez
It is, perhaps, the sound you least expect on a long-distance phone interview with a filmmaker who has spent eight years documenting the lives of a Manhattan ménage à trois: first the teeny voice of a child, then a plaintive shriek.
For a moment, Susan Kaplan -- wife, mother of two, former Miami Beach resident and current New Yorker -- stops for a minute. “Honey?”
Quickly she gets back on topic. But it’s hard to ignore the domestic interruption during a discussion of Three of Hearts: A Postmodern Family , a 97-minute documentary about a very different kind of domesticity. The film explores the relationship of Sam Cagnina, the oldest son of a Mafia hit man, with his life partner, Dr. Steven Margolin, a chiropractor, and their shared wife Samantha Singh, a struggling actress from Toronto. It is a riveting story that captures the ’’trinogomous’’ union in such intimate moments as the birth of their children as well as during thoughtful discussions of who -- and what -- they are.
Trinogomous, for the record, is a made-up word coined by Sam, Steven and Samantha, but it happens to be the best description of a unique arrangement that baffles both film viewers and the trio itself.
The film, which opens at Regal South Beach 18 Friday, catches up with Sam, Steven and Samantha in the middle of their 13-year relationship and follows them for eight years, a period in which initial domestic bliss gives way to more troubled moments.
“I never expected to be filming for eight years,” admits Kaplan, 42. “But over time we became friends and it turned out to be more of a natural collaboration. As they were growing and figuring out who they were, I was also developing my own relationship. I met David [Kaplan’s husband and now executive producer] while I was filming, and Samantha I were even pregnant at the same time.”
Those who believe this is a story about wild sex and alternative lifestyles will be sweetly wrong. Three of Hearts is an unflinching, candid look at three people’s search for themselves and for each other, and how that process eventually leads one of them to leave the relationship. In tracking their earnest efforts to fashion a family, the film explores both titillating details -- yes, they sleep together in one bed -- as well as deeper issues of love and intimacy and marriage and sexuality. In fact, Kaplan calls it “a story about the process of self-discovery.”
When Sam Cagnina decides to go for therapy because he wants to be a different (read: better) father to the trio’s first child, it sets off a series of events that transforms both the relationship and the people in it.
’’To make the three-way part work,’’ Kaplan says, “they had to shut some part of themselves out. We didn’t know really how much until later.”
MUTED CONTROVERSY
Because of the subject matter, the film has met with some controversy, though it has been relatively muted. The Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition, posted this on his organization’s website after the documentary was shown in the Toronto film festival in 2004: “The whole debate over the legalization of same-sex marriage takes on new urgency as we are being taught by Susan Kaplan that marriage shouldn’t be limited to just two partners -- but three, four, or more -- in various combinations.”
On the film’s own website, www.threeofheartsfilm.com, a pastor’s posting criticizes the film, calling it a ’’a disgrace to the God-given purpose of marriage’’ and suggests “lack of a moral compass.” (The website allows for comments, and viewers can ask questions of Sam, Steven, Samantha, Kaplan and a relationship expert in a “Behind the Lens” tab.)
These comments do not surprise Kaplan. Back when she started filming, the debate on homosexual unions was just moving into the national consciousness and her husband, David Friedson, warned her she was making a political movie. Yet, making a statement wasn’t what she wanted; she saw the trio’s attempt at a family as a human interest story.
“It was never my intention to say this was the new millennium,” Kaplan says. “I didn’t want to advocate for the polyamorous community. I didn’t even know such a thing existed. But I thought there was something to learn from the telling of their story. I didn’t know what, but it was an instinct.”
`GENEROUS SPIRIT’
It may have been an instinct honed as the youngest of four siblings raised in an intact family with a penchant for self-expression. Her mother Helen remembers her as “always interested in people. She had a heart for people who were different.” Eldest brother Mitchell, owner of Books & Books, describes her as “generous of spirit.”
Her father Joseph was a labor attorney representing unions, and it was not unusual for the family, Susan included, to have dinner with farmworker leader Cesar Chavez at their Hibiscus Island home. She stood in picket lines and debated the issues of those tumultuous times. The parents, in turn, encouraged their children to pursue their dreams.
“There was a value put on exploring,” Mitchell recalls. “We were raised to value self-expression. Our parents never put any pressure on us to explore a certain road.”
From an early age, Kaplan was interested in drama. First in children’s theater and then at Miami Beach High, she acted in plays and worked on sets.
“She always enjoyed acting but she was also an organizer and into helping people,” Helen Kaplan recalls. “When she was in school, she organized a group that brought drama into the inner city.”
She graduated with a BFA in acting from New York University but ended up pursuing a career in documentaries after working on films in a job with a cultural arts center after college. Her first feature documentary, Small Wonders , was nominated for an Academy Award in 1996 and she was also one of the producers of the feature film version of Music of the Heart.
In fact, it was those early years in acting that brought her to the story in Three of Hearts . Kaplan had gone to school with Steven Margolin and acted in community children’s theater with Sam Cagnina, so when she ran into them again at the house of a mutual friend, it was actually more of a reunion.
They balked, however, when she asked to film them. They felt it would exploit their relationship. But over time their friendship grew and they invited her over for Samantha’s 30th birthday. Three hundred film hours later, Three of Hearts was born. In March, distributor THINKFilm will release a DVD with a commentary track, updates and selected outtakes. The film will air on Bravo in June.
With Three of Hearts out in the world, Kaplan wants to continue working with DocuClub, an organization she founded for documentary filmmakers 10 years ago. Future projects will likely bring her to her hometown. She’s interested in the story of an urban debate league her sister-in-law, Barbara Garrett, started in Miami inner city schools last year. “It’s the type of story I like to tell,” she says.
But she will also be focusing a lens closer to home, with daughter Maya, 5, and son Aidan, 2. “They grow up so quickly,” she says wistfully. “Maya is already talking about having me at home more.”
