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Village Voice
October 18, 2005
Three of Hearts: A Postmodern Family
by Laura Sinagra
This well-told doc follows nine years in the lives of a gay couple and the woman they invited to share their relationship. When we meet this happy threesome -- Sam, Steven, and Samantha -- they’re trying to get pregnant. In winning interviews spliced between suspenseful EPT tests, the assertively bourgeois strivers chat about their setup, their decision to marry, their spa business, their mix-and-match sex (“There’s never a feeling of being left out!”). Actress hopeful Samantha explains how her traditional Indian family absorbed the news. Tall, dorky, handsome Steven’s working-class mom ultimately embraces the wacky arrangement. When histrionic Queer Eye quipper Sam brings his mates to his 20-year high school reunion, an old girlfriend howls, “That's so coooool!” A riveting lifestyle infomercial, the first half of Hearts hails the ideal committed state -- three incomes, two people buying birthday presents, always somebody to snap that vacation photo. But years pass; kids are born; giddy jokes about indeterminate paternity grow sardonic; business gets stressful; latent issues require therapy. Beyond the buzz of iconoclasm, our explorers find a regular troubled marriage, only with three sides to every problem.
