Group Marriage

Group Marriage is a 1972 sex comedy film directed by Stephanie Rothman. It was the first film she made for Dimension Pictures, a company in which she was a minor shareholder with her husband Charles Swartz along with Larry Woolner.

Plot
Chris (Aimée Eccles) who works at a car rental store alongside her friend Judy, squabbles with boyfriend Sandor (Solomon Sturges), who writes bumper sticker slogans. Chris meets parole officer Dennis (Jeff Pomerantz) when both try to get into the same car and she and Sandor give him a lift. Dennis winds up refereeing an argument between Sandor and Chris, which results in Chris accidentally hitting Dennis. They invite Dennis to spend the night at their place; during the evening, Chris gets into bed with Dennis and sleeps with him.

Sandor discovers Dennis in bed with Chris. Chris says she still loves Sandor but likes Dennis too. Sandor is originally annoyed but eventually calms down. In the interest of fairness, Dennis invites Chris and Sandor to dinner with his ex-girlfriend Jan (Victoria Vetri), an ex-stewardess. Jan and Sandor are clearly attracted to each other and wind up in bed, alongside Chris and Dennis, although Chris has troubles with her jealousy.

At a picnic on the beach, Jan meets lifeguard Phil Kirby (Zack Taylor), who later sleeps with Chris and moves in with the other five. Phil decides to bring in a third girl for the household and invites in Elaine (Claudia Jennings), a lawyer. There is tension between Phil and Elaine when he discovers the latter is representing Phil's ex wife, however they resolve these differences after they realise how much they like each other.

The "group marriage" of the six of them attracts media attention and much criticism. They decide to stay true to the arrangement. Chris announces she is pregnant, although she is unsure who the father is. Their car is firebombed by unknown assailtants. Elaine defiantly suggests they all get married in a group.

Jan chafes at the arrangement and has sex with a man outside the group. She winds up leaving them. However Jan returns at the ending to a wedding between Chris (now heavily pregnant), Elaine, Sander, Phil, Denis and the new member, Judy (Chris' workmate). Their gay friends Rodney and Randy also marry each other.

There is a subplot about parole officer Dennis having to try to find a job for an ex-con, Ramon, who keeps getting in to fights. A running commentary on the group is provided by their gay neighbors, Rodney and Randy.

Cast

 * Victoria Vetri as Jan
 * Aimée Eccles as Chris - Rothman said "She had this impish quality and she had this sort of sparkling manner that I thought made her very right for a comedy. I also liked the idea that it was nontraditional casting at that time, having someone whose features were Asian play the leading lady."
 * Solomon Sturges as Sander - Sturges was the son of Preston Sturges and Rothman said "He was so good. He really had a firm grasp of the character, and he enhanced the role."
 * Claudia Jennings as Elaine
 * Zack Taylor as Phil
 * Jeff Pomerantz as Dennis - Rothman recalled "he kept on trying to suddenly, in a scene, inject business that would.. throw the cameraman" and "try to upstage people by grimacing at a certain time. He was just a problem, a nuisance, and one of the ways I solved that was to use him in fewer scenes."
 * Norman Bartold as Findley
 * John McMurtry as Randy
 * Pepe Serna as Ramon
 * Bill Striglos as Rodney
 * Jayne Kennedy Judy
 * Jack Bernardi as Father
 * Milt Kamen as Justice of the Peace
 * Ron Gans as Interviewer
 * Andrew Rubin as AC-DC

Production
According to Rothman, Larry Woolner, who ran Dimension, "wanted me to make a sexy film, and I tried to think of how I could do that and anchor it in something that said something about sexual mores." She was reading a book Future Shock which included discussion of group marriage and thought that "might be a wonderful framework in which to create a sex comedy that said something about the temperaments of the people involved, their goals, the social pitfalls of trying to do something like this in a society where it’s neither legal nor admired particularly.”

Rothman was determined to handle the topic "in a way that was not sordid and sleazy" but rather "humorous and pithy and imaginative... my intention at least was to make something that was a surprise."

"I was trying to make a bedroom farce," she said. Rothman admired that genre because "I like the fact that it’s very dynamic, things are always happening in it. The humor is fast and furious. The people are put in extreme situations and must devise ways to get out of them." (She had even acted in a production of Georges Feydeau's Hotel Paradiso.)

She gave the characters different jobs because she "wanted a mix of people who... could draw on their work experience in some way that would affect the common life experience that they shared during the time of the story."

The film was announced in January 1972 and filmed later that year. Rothman said "I like comedy best of all and Group Marriage was the first chance I had to do an outright comedy. Unlike The Velvet Vampire, it didn’t go under the guise of being something else."

Rothman later worked with Solomon Sturges on The Working Girls.

Like The Student Nurses the film featured a number of montages. Rothman later said: The way I was making films at that time, in the amount of days I had to shoot in, it was a shorthand way of showing a certain quality of theirs, without dialogue. Which filled up time, to be very honest with you, that would make the film long enough to be feature length. Because in the amount of time I had to shoot, dialogue always takes more time to shoot than scenes that you can shoot without synchronized sound, and so I needed a certain number of those in every film. I had to carefully choose where to put thosescenes, so that they did advance the story and tell you something about the character, but at the same time allowed me to not use synchronized sound.

Music
The soung "Darling Companion" which plays over the opening credits was written and performed by John Sebastian.

Reception
According to Rothman the film was received "very positively."

Critical
The Boston Phoenix called it an "extraordinary comedy... this gem of a picture is well worth the search... that true rarity, a sexy comedy. Considering how quite difficult it is to make a sensuous picture to begin with, and noting how few deft comedy directors have emerged over the past twenty years, one would have to admire director  Stephanie Rothman for her technical facility alone."

A writer in The Gazette called it "a good example of what enlightened erotica can be like. It features female characters who are professionally and sexually assertive - but not intimidating. They are capable of making decisions for themselves, yet they're still able to love the men in their lives and be loved in return."

Shock Magazine said "at its core the flick doesn’t know what it wants to be. At times it’s a Free Love forum pocked with messages on the “failure to communicate”. Other times it’s your standard, leering sex farce. Then odd, unnecessary subplots intrude, like one guy’s melodramatic job as a probation officer. And though the filmmakers obviously thought they were on the cutting edge, with all four leads in bed together, smoking grass, they never shed the old morality horseshit. Under its mod surface, it’s simple, romantic pabulum, swaddled in the latest trendiness, Ignoring all the comic possibilities in favor of generic, self-serious fodder."

Dannis Peary later wrote: "If Group Marriage has a real weakness, it is that it tries to be daringly topical, even though the subject of “group marriage” seems more unusual than shocking. The violence that ensues when the angry public hears about their living arrangement is a little absurd. If the film has a real strength, it is that all the protagonists are as gentle as they are. It is certainly not typical of movie romances to have so many characters liking each other for an entire film when things are going on that would make everyday people despise one another." According to Henry Jenkins "This farcical film proposes a radical reconstruction of family relations and traces the process by which the various characters overcome their jealousies and find happiness in communal relations."