TOI-Crest picks five movies that famously put the poly into the onscreen amour.

JULES ET JIM (1962)

Perhaps the most famous film about polyamory, Francois Truffaut's audacious French New Wave masterpiece features two Bohemian friends, Jules and Jim, who meet Catherine, an alluring and free-spirited woman who takes up with both of them over the course of several years, changing relationships and shifting emotions.

BELLE EPOQUE (1992)

A deliciously wrought awardwinning Spanish romance, this playful film follows a young deserter provided refuge by a free-thinking artist with four daughters, who each take turns seducing the soldier before he decides to wed one.

BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID (1969)

Sure, this may be the most celebrated bromance in Hollywood history, but at plot's core rests a delicate three-way relationship between the picaresque Butch, the taciturn Sundance and a carefree schoolteacher named Etta. And in deliciously desi fashion, a dreamy song sequence reveals all. 'Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head' is as much about Sundance's quiet consent as it is about Etta and Butch cavorting on that bicycle.

MANZILEIN AUR BHI HAIN (1974)

Mahesh Bhatt's debut Bollywood film is a crackling walk on the wild side with two convicts on the run and a sultry sex-worker who doesn't mind making love to either of them. Bold, vile and very French, the film was, however, more talked about for its nude scenes and its nasty brush with the censors.

THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING (1988)

This adaptation of Milan Kundera's novel, about an intense mênage a trois during the Prague Spring of 1968, was widely hailed for its artful choreography of narrative elements, which should come as no surprise given the heavyweights involved: Philip Kaufman helmed it using a Jean-Claude Carri?re script, while Daniel Day Lewis and Juliette Binoche played the leads. Critics swooned but Kundera disagreed, and swore off all adaptations. That's one creative threesome that ended in disaster.