Tom Twyker’s sharp movie about restless Berlin creatives adds a chemical, ultramodern dimension to the notion of ménage a trois. 3 is a brave, layered exploration of love in which sexuality rules but gender is secondary. Dr. Hanna Blum is the chiseled hostess of a talk show so rarefied it devolves into psychobabble. She lives with Simon, an “art engineer” who executes the ideas of sculptors and architects through installations. Adam Born is a geneticist who pioneered in-vitro fertilization and addresses an ethics council that Hanna attends. They are the three of the title. Sophie Rois plays Hanna, Sebastian Schipper is Simon, and David Striesow plays the multidimensional Adam.
Hanna and Simon first face death when his mother Hilde succumbs to pancreatic cancer. Simon contracts testicular cancer, and when one testicle is removed, it psychologically renders him impotent. While Simon undergoes his operation – bloodily depicted in Frank Griebe’s merciless, occasionally split-screen cinematography – Hanna is enjoying a soccer game where Adam scores. Shortly after, Hanna and Adam sleep together.
The sex in 3 is earthy, passionate and spontaneous. Simon and Adam, too, eventually make love after an amazing scene in which Adam restores Simon’s potency, awakening Simon to his own bisexuality (Hanna never makes love with a woman but does with both men). If I’m not communicating the unusual complexity of this movie, consider this twist: When Simon is recovering, he recognizes that he had an affair 17 years earlier with the attending nurse. She tells him she had an abortion, thereby informing him he’s potent indeed – and driving the plot toward its provocatively ambiguous and fertile conclusion.
Writer/director Twyker, who directed the kinetic Run Lola Run, knows his way around intelligentsia. The German dialogue is salty and pungent, the English subtitles often witty on their own. There’s humor, too. Naturally, the core tension revolves around the relationships between the men, each man with Hanna, and their sharing. The subtlety lies in how each treats intimacy and loneliness and whether three people can get beyond their individuality to some more communal place.
I don’t pretend to understand the genetics web Twyker weaves in this kinetic meditation on affection. What I get and what’s so dazzling about this movie besides its complicated plot is how moral it is. Each of its key characters is ethical and independent, so no matter how graphic 3 is, it’s never prurient. It engages us as participants, not voyeurs.
✭✭✭✭
Reviews are scored on a four-star scale.
3 will play at 4:15 pm on Saturday, April 2 at the Cleveland International Film Festival.
