It hasn’t escaped the internet’s attention that Justin Kuritzkes and Celine Song – the screenwriters behind two of the most talked-about films of the last year, Challengers and Past Lives – are a couple IRL, and have each honed in on a very particular subject: love triangles. Should we read too much into that? Probably not! But it has prompted many people to reflect about their favourite threesomes in cinema, alongside all the other Challengers discourse the week has had to offer.

“Three tickets to Challengers, please,” goes the tweet, alongside an image of the Gossip Girl reboot’s Max Wolfe with his hands suggestively placed in the laps of two friends-turned-lovers, or that infamous scene from The L Word: Generation Q, or the cast of Cruel Intentions, or Buffy, Angel and Spike (if we’re counting extensive internet fanfics). But the concept of threesome cinema isn’t entirely new, of course, with many iterations diving even deeper into the physical and psychological implications of the ménage à trois.

Below, we’ve listed some of the genre’s highlights.

LOVE (2015)

A favourite of the classier porn bots that have taken over X, Gaspar Noé’s Love (2015) is a very explicit entry into the threesome genre, famously featuring unsimulated sex scenes. The director is very candid about its appeal, saying that people needed an “artistic excuse” to masturbate during the pandemic and, luckily for him, the film was available to watch on Netflix at the time. In case you didn’t watch it in 2020, and pause, and rewind it several times, the erotic drama revolves around an American student (Karl Glusman) living in Paris (this will become a recurring theme). In it, he reflects on his current and past relationships, including a pivotal threesome that leads back around to present day.

THE DREAMERS (2003)

In 2003, Bertolucci said: “I see your threesomes, and I’ll raise you a threesome with a little bit of incest sprinkled on top.” It’s the mid-60s, and Matthew is yet another US exchange student in Paris, where he’s studying French. At a protest, he falls in with twins Théo and Isabelle (Eva Green and Louis Garrel) and moves into their apartment, where the trio’s friendship-slash-romance grows increasingly intimate and complex. All of this plays out against the backdrop of the 1968 Paris student riots, but don’t worry, there’s plenty of time for nude pillow forts and erotic dares as well.

JULES ET JIM (1962)

Francois Truffaut’s Jules et Jim (1962) is a French New Wave classic – so classic, in fact, that it has an episode of Emily in Paris named after it. The film follows the titular friends and their relationship(s) with a captivating woman, Catherine, over a 25-year period including World War I. While nothing gets too explicit, their love lives get so entangled that their ménage à trois credentials are undeniable. Perhaps what solidified its place in the history books, though, is the fact that the director treats the story with such sensitivity and open-mindedness, though the topic remains taboo even today.

WILD THINGS (1998)

“Wild Things is lurid trash,” said film critic Roger Ebert in 1998, describing it as: “A three-way collision between a softcore sex film, a soap opera and a B-grade noir.” He still liked it, though. Based in Miami (not Paris!) the glossy, controversial thriller sees two female high school students accuse a guidance counsellor of rape, in what turns out to be a labyrinth of tricks and conspiracies. Somewhere in there – specifically, in a motel room following a successful spot of fraud – Neve Campbell, Matt Dillon, and Denise Richards celebrate with booze and group sex. Honestly? There’s something a bit off about this one. The line “guidance counsellors get to find out all sorts of interesting things” should never be uttered during foreplay.

VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA (2008)

When Vicky Cristina Barcelona – which sees the pair played by Rebecca Hall and Scarlett Johansson visit Barcelona for the summer – was released in 2008, there was some vigorous debate about whether or not the three-way kissing in the film should actually be classed as a threesome. Maybe it should, maybe it shouldn’t. Maybe we’re just distracted by the thought of kissing Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz in a darkroom, while we wait for our film to develop. What this list so far does confirm is that taking a brief trip to Europe is a surefire way to get yourself into a threesome, if you so desire.

Y TU MAMÁ TAMBIÉN (2001)

Alfonso Cuarón’s road movie revolves around two teenage boys who take a long drive through Mexico in the late 90s, accompanied by a woman in her late 20s, who’s in the process of breaking up with her husband and – unbeknownst to them – is diagnosed with fatal cancer. Critically-acclaimed but controversial for its depictions of sex and nudity, the film doesn’t beat around the bush when it comes to the fleeting romance that sparks between the three, both separately and all together. The coming-of-age story also ends with the boys breaking things off with their own girlfriends, as they all part ways to live their separate lives. And guess where said girlfriends have been this whole time? That’s right, a trip to Europe...