Multiple Choices - Loves Me Loves Me Not
1995 · 17m · Canada
Directed by Alison Burns
Genres: documentary, essay film
Tones: contemplative, provocative
People from different backgrounds discuss romantic love and partnership, comparing fidelity, monogamy, polygamy, arranged marriage, and the pull between love and lust in their own lives.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Burns could've just made a polemic about nontraditional relationships, but instead she sits with the mess—letting monogamy and polygamy coexist in the same frame without scoring points, which is either frustratingly even-handed or secretly radical depending on your mood.
A formally restrained essay film that inherits the Canadian documentary tradition of patient observation while positioning itself squarely in the lineage of relationship-as-philosophical-territory; the measured pacing and refusal of editorializing voice mark a deliberate curatorial stance.
The decision to let people speak across difference without mediation—no cutesy montage, no narrator steering—means the film's entire weight rests on casting and the rhythm of when to hold on a face, and Burns nails that restraint.