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Two and a half years after its kickstarter began, and two years after it premiered at the Rome Film Festival, Tao Ruspoli's documentary Monogamish is finally showing in the United States. It's playing at New York's Roxy Cinema Tribeca through October 19th, then goes on tour. Upcoming screenings.
The movie features several of the poly world's most visible movers and shakers, including Diana Adams, Dossie Easton, Christopher Ryan, Stephanie Coontz, and the coiner of the word "monogamish," Dan Savage. From the blurb:
Independent filmmaker and son-of-an-Italian-Prince Tao Ruspoli takes to the road to talk to his relatives, advice columnists, psychologists, historians, anthropologists, artists, philosophers, sex workers, sex therapists, and ordinary couples about love, sex & monogamy in our culture. What he discovers about his very unconventional family, and about the history and psychology of love and marriage, leads him to question the ideal of monogamy, and the traditional family values that go with it.
Trailer:
IndieWire published its review this morning:
The Polyamorous Revolution in One Entertaining and Stylish Documentary
This new documentary is more than just a primer on non-traditional relationships — though it does that well, too.
By Jude Dry
“Being in love is like being high,” says Roberta Haze, a California-based costume designer sporting purple hair and layers of hoop wearings. “That has to transform into love, because that stays. Like snorting coke, it’s not a state that you can live in all the time.”
...“Every new relationship that’s sexual is kind of an adventure, and then the adventure goes away,” [Dan] Savage tells Ruspoli. “Then it’s just kind of where you live, and then it’s not an adventure. And how can you continue to surprise each other? Without feeling like you have to pull rabbits out of a hat all the time.”
Ruspoli appears on camera as a boyishly charming and somewhat befuddled 40-something, easy to root for by the way he wears his heart on his sleeve. ...
“Our economic system is based on an idea of a male breadwinner supporting a wife and children,” says lawyer Diana Adams. “This is a way governments can privatize dependency and not have to take care of single mothers and their children… Having the government say, ‘Why don’t you get into a sexual relationship with a man who will support you,” is the equivalent to the government being a pimp to poor women in America.”
The interviews in the film touch briefly but profoundly on every major alternative philosophy surrounding marriage, feminism, sexuality, and relationships. “Monogamish” is like a starter course in the prevailing thinking around non-monogamy as taught by its foremost writers, philosophers, and therapists. ...
[Esther Perel:] “In one relationship, we want security, stability, dependability, all the anchoring, grounding experiences of life. At the same time, we also want our love life to bring with it mystery and awe and novelty and surprise and the unexpected and that which fuels desire. We are basically asking one person to give us two sets of fundamental human needs — it isn’t a problem that you solve, it’s a paradox that you manage.”
Following a touching “aha” moment for Ruspoli, Savage sums it up succinctly: “The culture says sex is so unimportant that you shouldn’t prioritize it in a marriage, but sex is so hugely important that you can’t have it with anyone else.”
Ruspoli’s presence in the film elevates “Monogamish” beyond the predictable talking heads documentary. ...
Grade: B+
The whole review (October 14, 2017).
● Diana Adams and others in the movie will appear in person at the 8 o'clock New York showings on October 15 and 16. She posts,
This is the most nuanced and high-level view of consensual nonmonogamy as part of cultural change that I've ever seen, and I highly recommend it. I'll be speaking after the Oct. 15 and 16 shows which each start at 8 p.m. On the 15th I'll be speaking with the director Tao Ruspoli and Daniel Pinchbeck, and on the 16th with Tao and Christopher Ryan. I highly recommend buying tickets before it sells out. I hope you'll join us!
More info about the movie. Website. Facebook page.
Update: Salon posts a video interview with Tao Ruspoli (Oct. 13).
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