Triangle is a 1994 animated short film (8 1/2 minutes) directed by Erica Russell.
It tells a very simple story, told in abstract animation. A naked man and a naked woman appear and dance together, their bodies intertwined in a manner that sometimes looks like ballet, and sometimes suggests sexual intercourse. Their idyllic relationship is interrupted when another woman comes swooping in and begins dancing with the man. What will be the outcome of the triangle?
Tropes:
- Color-Coded Characters: The man and the first woman are colored a light brown/tan. The second woman, when she appears, is colored black, both to emphasize how she's disrupting the relationship and to distinguish her from the first woman.
- Death Glare: For most of the film the three characters are drawn as abstract human shapes. The only detailed shot of a human face is when the first woman is giving a furious side-eye to the man and the second woman.
- Line Boil: A fair amount of this in what is obviously a hand-drawn short featuring abstract animation.
- Love Triangle: Hence the name! The woman first appears as a literal triangle, before the triangle resolves into the shape of a female figure. At one point the three characters are actually shown on the points of a triangle.
- Nudity Equals Honesty: The man and the first woman are both naked throughout as the dance, showing their innocence. The second woman, the seductress, comes wearing a billowing cloak.
- Polyamory: The triangle resolves itself when the man and both women enter into a throuple, as shown by their embrace.
- Silence Is Golden: No dialogue in the short.
- Something Else Also Rises: At one point a series of abstract shapes resolve themselves into a triangle with an arrow sticking out of it, before the shapes morph into the shape of the man.
- Stock Visual Metaphor: The love triangle is represented as a triangle. The second woman first appears as an actual triangle. There is also a visual echo between the triangle and the shape of a woman's pubic hair.
- A Threesome Is Hot: The end of the film has all three characters intertwined in a dance that again also suggests sex, which is confirmed when the scene ends and the man has one woman curled up under each arm.
