A horny gay ex-monk wonders if monogamy is his kinda groove in the latest offering from Dublin Film Qlub. Holy God! It must be the 70s.

What could be more natural than abandoning the monastery where you’ve spent the last few years in order to join the brotherhood of the gay underground, with their anonymous orgies, and their –oh, so 1970s – ban on long-term committed relationships?

Christopher Larkin’s A Very Natural Thing (1974) is an essay on monogamy versus polygamy, and a very entertaining and enlightening one indeed.

26 year-old David, having left a monastery, begins his gay life yearning for domestic bliss. After he meets Mark in a gay bar, he soon discovers what monogamy means while on every corner of New York, gay men are in the throes of sexual liberation.

Including interviews made with people on the street during the 1973 ‘Christopher Street Pride Parade’, probably among the first Pride festivals ever, this is a film that shows how unchanged much of the concerns of gay relationships still are. It shows a slice of life at the beginning of gay freedom, and at the same time deals with all the complicated issues of falling in love that remain timeless.

Dublin Film Qlub presents A Very Natural Thing, December 21, The New Theatre, Temple Bar, D2, €8