The Threesome: A Steamy Hookup Turns Into the Year’s Most Tender Rom-Com

In recent years, the rom-com genre has been flourishing with new and exciting films that are a mixture of fantasy, horror, and oftentimes thrilling. This year is no exception; with Materialists releasing earlier in the summer, and Oh, Hi! following close behind, there's never been a better time to be a romantic. Rounding out the summer of love is Chad Hartigan's The Threesome, which takes a hookup gone wrong and makes us expect the unexpected. The Threesome holds its best moments when exploring complicated relationships and the irreversible consequences. With a performance from Jonah Hauer-King that would make anyone get swept off their feet, this sexy romp offers more than just sexual tension and steamy romance to its audience.

Opening the film is a wedding, a little cliché for a romance film, but in The Threesome it just works. Connor (Jonah Hauer-King) is giving a speech about love, while his ex-coworker and longtime crush Olivia (Zoey Deutch) watches from her designated seat. From the moment the film opens, their playful and often flirty chemistry is felt. Connor has more serious feelings for Olivia; her feelings for him are there, but she doesn't see herself worthy of that kind of love, even as the film progresses. The Threesome at its core is a story about young people looking for love, even in unconventional ways, seeking someone to go through all of life's highs and lows. In the heat of the moment, Connor, Olivia, and their newfound friend Jenny (Ruby Cruz) find themselves in a situation that feels like my mother's favorite soap opera.

The trio share a night of drunken fun at Connor's humble abode that leads to consequences that none of these three lovebirds took into account prior to their exchange. In the morning after their threesome, Connor finds that Olivia is gone, leaving the house before anyone wakes up. As he contemplates the actions of last night, not thinking anyone was in the house, Jenny appears and has one last steamy moment with Connor before she heads back home. The Threesome focuses mostly on the relationship that Connor wants to bloom with Olivia, and after that night, he finds himself in quite the predicament as both women he shared a bed with on the same night end up pregnant, throwing these three into a post one-night stand that alters their lives in many ways.

Written by Ethan Ogilby the script floats between its romance and comedy well, injecting dramatic twists that keep the audience and Connor on his feet. The film is shown through Connor's perspective, giving a side of unplanned pregnancy that isn't often shown. That of a young man who knows he wants to be a father eventually, but is respecting whatever outcome the mothers of his children choose for their bodies. It's refreshing to see, but Ogilby leans into humorous outcomes during tense situations one too many times making tough conversations end in ways that would truly only happen in movies. The weaving of Connor and Olivia's relationship with their connection to Jenny is done well, making a stressful situation that much more exhausting when Connor has to pretend to be dating both to maintain their secret.

Jenny and Olivia are both drastically different women; both are intelligent and complicated, but their ways of life are anything but similar. Jenny lives with her parents, who wouldn't be happy about her getting knocked up by a stranger. Olivia works in a bar and has a bad habit of hooking up with her married ex, not ready for a relationship, let alone a baby. Ogilby shows most of the film's conflict through them; both being pregnant at the same time by the same guy leads to a lot of complicated feelings for one another. There's jealousy, envy, and even relief between the two while they go through the toughest change in their lives. When Connor has to pretend to be Jenny's boyfriend to appease her family, Olivia feels as though he's being taken advantage of, making the film's final act—the delivery of two babies in the same hospital—all the more tense and gut-wrenching.

Between Ogilby's eccentric script Hartigan's direction is laser focused on developing a relationship between Connor and Olivia. It's rare there's a moment in the film that doesn't include the both of them, making it incredibly easy to root for their love. I found myself wanting their situation to work so badly, and thanks to the strong writing and directing pair, King and Deutch are given ample time to shine. Their pairing has a chemistry that makes it easy to understand how Jenny's character wants to join them. King plays Connor as the nice guy, he's open to whatever decision these young women want to make, his respectful nature makes it hard to see him go through everything the film puts him through. Deutch is playing hard to get, but it's mostly a defensive measure, her work as Olivia shows her ability to switch from a motherly glow to a gloomy dread when faced with tough battles.

Where the film falters is with Jenny's characterization, and it's not a fault of Cruz, whose eagerness is enthralling from her first moment of screen time. The film focuses so much on Connor and Olivia, and their desire to be a family that Jenny is often left off-screen. When Connor has to pretend to be her boyfriend for an appearance with her family, there's an awkward tension that grounds the film. Two people who are essentially strangers trying to find their footing together through outrageous circumstances make for a compelling film. The storyline between them is often cut too short for more drama between Connor and Olivia, leaving a lot of Jenny's life unknown, which is a shame because Cruz has a masterful way of commanding a scene.

The Threesome shows the attraction between the three main characters through its visuals in a romantic gaze that often lingers on shots of their eyes and lips captured in the cinematography from Sing Howe Yam. During emotional proclamations of frustrations or even the pains of childbirth, Yam gets the camera focused on Jenny and Olivia's faces. Seeing tears form in Connor's eyes during yet another argument with Olivia, and then his eyes light up at the sign of his child, makes the film captivating during its dramatic moments. Paired with the piano chords of Keegan DeWitt, the score elevates lulls with its soft approach.

Ultimately, there's so much to love from The Threesome that it reminds us that life is often unconventional, and that's okay. Hartigan takes the story of a mid-morning soap opera and gives us one of the year's best rom-coms with a charming leading man performance.