FILM / John Lyttle on Cinema
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Your support makes all the difference.Threesome is, amongst other things, a coming out movie, and not simply because Josh Charles discovers that he's gay (he doesn't enjoy sleeping with Laura Flynn Boyle - of course he's gay). It's also a coming out movie because yet another Baldwin brother arrives to join his siblings on the screen. After Alec, Billy and Daniel, here's Stephen, brandishing the same slippery unreconstructed machismo and the same little boy smile; the latter is somehow meant to excuse the former.
The big surprise is that in this case it does. Maybe that's because Stephen is the youngest of the Baldwin boys and his cocky appeal is natural rather than a reflex. Or maybe some of us have just been getting the Baldwins wrong. Stephen displays all the family's celluloid traits - he'll lie to and cheat on women if he possibly can, like Alec did to Jennifer Jason Leigh in Miami Blues, like Billy did to Sharon Stone in Sliver, like Daniel did to Darryl Hannah in Attack of the 50 Foot Woman - but now it seems like an upfront declaration rather than underhand hi-jinks. Stephen expects women to know what he is and what he's after. He expects them to be as tough as he is. He enjoys them being as tough as he is. He likes them too much to be deliberately hurtful and if he loves them, then he'll be as faithful as Ol' Yeller, because he doesn't fall easily.
Which brings to mind that Alec gets worked over by Kim Basinger in The Getaway, that Billy has his heart broken by Sherilyn Fenn in Three of Hearts and Daniel has his hands full with a 50ft woman. As I say, some of us may have gotten the Baldwins wrong. . .
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