Monogamish

The institution of marriage is in crisis.  1.1 million Americans get divorced every year. And it’s not just the couples who suffer: half of American children will see their parents get divorced.

Meanwhile, the “traditional” values that have shaped our understanding of love, sex, and marriage are losing their hold on our culture. The last half century has seen dramatic changes in attitudes about sex, work, gender roles, and the distribution of social and economic power.

But despite all these transformations the ideal of a monogamous loving couple hasn't changed one bit.

It’s as if we are held captive to a certain picture of what a loving relationship must be like, which continues to exert a powerful influence on the popular imagination. But why? Where does this ideal come from? Is it inevitable? This film attempts to answer these questions through a very personal reflection on Ruspoli’s own marriage, divorce, and family history. What he discovers about his very unconventional family, and about the history and psychology of love and marriage leads him to question everything we take for granted about marriage.

Why are relationships so hard? Recovering from a very public divorce, Tao Ruspoli took to the road to ask this question to advice columnists, relatives, sex therapists, historians, anthropologists, artists, philosophers, sex workers and ordinary couples. The results of this exploration of sex, love and monogamy were so unexpected and so surprising he had to make a film about it.