From Deseret News archives:
Sundance: 'Sister Wife' takes look at joys, trials of polygamy
A documentary short film about a woman's joys and trials of living in a plural marriage is making its debut at this year's Sundance Film Festival. "Sister Wife" is an 11-minute film about DoriAnn, a fundamentalist woman from Centennial Park, Ariz., who shares a husband with her younger sister.
"Imagine your sweetheart in the kitchen, kissing another woman," DoriAnn says in the film, offering an intimate glimpse into her life as the second wife of a man who is also married to her younger sister.
Director Jill Orschel met DoriAnn (whose last name she would not reveal) in 2005. She initially sought to do a feature-length film in fly-on-the-wall style, documenting the lives of a polygamous family. DoriAnn's husband and sister-wife nixed the idea.
DoriAnn was still game for a film.
"DoriAnn is someone who experiences it fully. She's hating life and embracing it. She still wants to stay there. She wants a third wife to come into the picture, thinking it would bring balance," Orschel said of her film's subject. "It's a complicated, difficult life and I think that she feels if she rises above these earthly obstacles then that helps her become more ... "
Interviewing DoriAnn was difficult, what with children and family issues.
"One of the things that DoriAnn does is this bath ritual every morning," Orschel said. "She's got 12 kids and before any of them wake up, she takes a big long bath with a bunch of candles. There's something about the imagery that I love: the reflections and the light and just that idea of cleansing or baptism or even exposing or revealing it seemed like an interesting metaphor for what I wanted to get."
The bath, combined with a frank interview, paints a portrait of a complex woman in modern plural marriage.
"She offers at the end of this film this incredible reason why she stays. She feels like when she's able to appreciate her sister wife and her husband and rise above and get past the jealousies — she feels like a goddess," Orschel said. "I just wonder if it's really possible to live that all the time."
The renewed scrutiny on polygamy has not gone unnoticed by Orschel and her producer, Alexandra Fuller. While making the documentary, the raid on the Fundamentalist LDS Church's YFZ Ranch took place. DoriAnn, Orschel said, believes polygamists should be more outspoken about their beliefs.
"She's right there. She's out and proud of it," she said. "I think it's really courageous of her."
Orschel hopes the film's unique subject will get audiences talking about how groups of people as a whole are viewed. She was nervous when she showed the film to DoriAnn.
"She liked it," Orschel said, adding that DoriAnn plans to attend one of the Sundance screenings with members of her family.
"Sister Wife" will be screened before the film "The Glass House," a documentary about women in Iran.
E-mail: bwinslow@desnews.com
