Cinema

For some, life is numbers: two for tea and tea for two is romance; it's Love Story. Romantic triangles, well, they're rather unfortunate but quite conventional, too: see Gone with the Wind, Casablanca, Jules et Jim. Four on a roll? That we can understand - just. That's farce, satire: rent Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice.

But three in a bed? That's not a romantic triangle, that's lust, chaos, anarchy. Sure, it's a tease - that's why so many Bond movies have flirted with the idea - but it's also . . . disturbing.

Lurking somewhere beneath this libidinous version of Twister is blasphemy: that sexuality isn't fixed, that given the right circumstances, everything blurs into bisexuality and beyond. Of course, what with movies being run by men who let the little head do the big head's thinking, it's the women who blur first, turning dyke before your very contact lenses, as in Golden Balls and Lenny. But the pleasure on the women's faces subverts male fantasy, suggesting that lesbianism is a desire all women harbour.

And do boys dream of other boys? In Heartbreakers, it does seem that the model that Peter Coyote and Nick Mancuso sleep with is merely the coin of exchange between the two men; when Coyote bows out, you wonder who he's pissed off with - the lady or the lad. Threesome doesn't go quite that far . . . Josh Charles' gayness doesn't preclude an intense straight fling but Stephen Baldwin's heterosexuality is decidely monolithic - until the scene where the guys and Lara Flynn Boyle are getting down to business and Baldwin takes Charles' hand and places it on his butt. And for a moment - just a moment - flesh vanishes and possibilities appear.

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