Love and other considerations

• Published date: 06 November 2021
• Publication title: Mix, The

Ollie Lucks’ mop of dark curly hair has lurched left to right across his head, hauled upright and across by the film director himself as if he were adjusting an antenna.

It was previously angled at about 45 degrees in the opposite direction but apparently not receiving the signal Lucks was looking for.

And, sure enough, before long Jan Oliver (Ollie) Lucks is running his hands across his head again, recreating the earlier styling. It’s the unmistakable semaphore of a man involved in searching thought.

It looks hard on the hairline, which raises the possibility that Lucks is someone who, in pursuit of his art and answers, is happy enough to pull at his locks and wear the cost. That seems consistent with his new film, the reason we’re talking.

Otherwise, Lucks looks in good shape and sounds in good form, talking quickly with the clipped consonants of his German upbringing. The window behind him is dark, because he’s in ‘‘very rural’’ England and an autumn’s night has fallen there. He is wearing what looks like a properly thick Sunday jersey. It’s a relaxed and homely domestic sort of scene and he looks comfortable in it. It’s a friend’s place, he says.

But we’re not much interested in homely or domestic, because Lucks’ film tosses the domestic bath out with the bathwater before the baby’s even had the chance to get in. It’s called There’s No ‘‘I’’ in Threesome and the logical and perhaps only question to ask of its director and creator is ‘‘what on earth were you thinking?’’.

The question is never asked directly. But at one point Lucks will say: ‘‘It doesn’t really matter’’.

Which is pretty extraordinary in the circumstances.

The film documents the true story of Lucks’ decision, together with his partner, to spend the months leading into their wedding flinging caution to the wind, then plunging headfirst into polyamoury. Indeed, the opening scene involves Lucks leaping naked from a swimming pool highboard, metaphorical sure, but for real.

There are then frames of what looks very much like true love, Ollie and Zoe all dilated pupils and puckering.

‘‘We got engaged one year ago and have been in an open relationship for three months,’’ Lucks monologues over the opening credits. ‘‘Which means we are mostly committed but allowed to cheat on each other. Zoe is the love of my life, but I always felt like I didn’t make the most of my 20s, that I was a sexual underachiever. So, with the wedding as the finishing line, being open seemed like the perfect way to get that...