Cas (DVD Review) – A triple helping of gay threesomes

Dutch couple Sjors and Pepijn invite the younger student Cas to stay on their couch for a couple of days until he finds a place of his own. Pepijn is initially uncertain about this arrangement, especially when he discovers his boyfriend of seven years has already met up with the young man a few times before and hasn’t mentioned him. However, the tension soon begins to develop into something else as both men start to fall for Cas’s charms. As the barriers come down and the couple moves towards becoming a throuple, it could either destroy Sjors and Pepijn’s relationship or take it to places neither expected.

Although relatively short at 50 minutes long, Cas is an interesting and at times a rather sexy movie about three good-looking guys who aren’t afraid of wandering around in their underwear or hopping into bed with one another. It’s also a smart look at one of the issues that seems to be becoming more pressing in modern gay culture, of whether the tendency to separate sex from relationships and to be more open to bringing in a third (or more) person – either for the night or for longer – has consequences and issues that need to be looked at. It may seem like a good idea, or even a desirable political statement, but is there more to it than that?

It’s the sort of subject that it would be very easy to make a very judgemental movie about – either saying bringing in a third person is wrong and bound to end in disaster, or that it will open people up to joys they’d never imagined. Cas instead plots a more measured course, suggesting that all sorts of things are possible when you fundamentally alter the parameter of a relationship like this. The movies says that things aren’t likely to be as straightforward as they first appear and that the issues that will arise aren’t necessarily going to be the ones you expect.

At first it appears the main problem is going to be jealousy, but it increasingly becomes about the challenges to Sjors and Pepijn’s intimacy and the direction their lives are taking. Cas largely becomes a catalyst for them to examine problems that were already there rather than being either the cause or solution to them. This does mean that as a character Cas is a bit of a cipher. He’s cute, charming and often shirtless, but the way he’s written he’s less of a person than he is a remarkably compliant human metaphor.

It is Sjors and Pepijn that the film is ultimately interested in, and nicely it makes both of them rather flawed human beings. Pepijn is highly-strung and prone to flying off the handle, while Sjors takes things for granted a little too much and perhaps doesn’t consider his partner enough in his life decisions. It’s these issues that inviting Cas into their bed brings to the fore, and it does so in an entertaining way that both challenges and affirms how relationships can be.

As the main feature is comparatively short, the Cas DVD also includes a couple of bonus short films. The first is Bed Buddies, Reid Waterer’s short about three friends who wake up in bed together after a wild night out. They start piecing together how they ended up having a threesome and whether the fact they’ve slept together changes their friendship. The guys are forced to confront what they really think about one another and whether they can or should go back to being just platonic buddies, or perhaps try out being a throuple.

While fairly short it’s a witty and rather sexy short, with three good-looking guys who spend the entire film in their underwear. Although the dialogue is often a little on-the-nose compared to how people really talk, it’s still a sincere and nicely crafted look at something many gay people have faced, where they either have had sex with their gay friends or have contemplated it.

Finally, there’s the even shorter Tri-curious, which follows a gay couple wondering whether to have their first threesome. As they get ready they start to have trepidation about what it might mean, whether they want to go through with it or if they should have even contemplated it. While a reasonable watch it doesn’t add up to much and largely seems to be on the disc because of the thematic tie-in to threesomes rather than because it’s a particularly good short.

Overall Verdict: Cas is a sweet and sexy modern gay movie, looking at the repercussions of inviting a third person into your bed, with a couple of decent extra shorts added in to add to the package.

Reviewer: Tim Isaac