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One girl. Two guys. Three possibilities… Josh Charles (Dead Poets Society), Lara Flynn Boyle (Twin Peaks), and Stephen Baldwin star in this college dramedy about three dormitory suitemates who wander into a sexual threesome of sorts and survive to tell the tale. Threesome is partly auto-biographical, based on writer/director Andrew Fleming’s (The Craft, Dick) own college experiences. Fleming does a great job finding the right tone for the movie, giving many comic sequences room to breathe without sacrificing the dramatic underpinnings. The resulting movie is very funny, character-driven, and poignant without trying too hard.

The three leads are extraordinarily comfortable with each other and really shine in a handful of scenes that feel so natural, one wonders how much improvisation was incorporated into the film. My favorite scene is one where the boys harass Boyle for bringing home a ham-fisted boyfriend with helmet hair. (“Be wary of very scary, hairy Larry.”) The final act almost gets a little too heavy and the ending is a bit melancholy, but Threesome is a movie I connect with on a personal level because it resembles my own high school and college experience perhaps more than any other movie does. It’s a tribute to the brief but potently pivotal relationships in our lives — the ones that make us wonder, as Josh Charles narrates in the film, “How some people could be such a necessary part of one’s life one day and simply vanish the next. Isn’t it supposed to last?”

Costume designer Deborah Everton, cinematographer Alexander Gruszynski, and composer Thomas Newman help elevate the film above the indie film fray. The soundtrack of pop songs is pretty solid, too. With Alexis Arquette and Martha Gehman.