“You are so far behind, you think you are in first,” one character remarks to another in James Cameron Mitchell’s playful new film. Perhaps this his way of addressing the cocky know-it-all-superiority that is a cliché of New York before September 11, 2001. Crisis and tragedy perhaps provided an opportunity for several lost souls to make some sort of ‘real’ connection. There is a wonderful dreamy magic at work at Shortbus which is not typical for a film involving so much quasi-hardcore sexual content. The transitions between stories in the film involve an animated flybys of the city which is constructed of twinkly lit card-board and oil painted buildings, sort of a Michael Gondry-like homemade model and the stories are dramatically vibrant.
Justin Bond, a real-life New York cabaret singer, acts as the sort of Maître d' of the Shortbus lounge, a very liberated club in witch the patrons have all kinds of sex or sexual conversations with one another. He comments at one point while observing a room full of New Yorkers engaged in a full on orgy of sex. “It’s just like the 60s, but with less hope.” That is not exactly the message of the film, but more that voyeurism is participation, and the feelings here are indeed infectuous. In fact if you see one ensemble feel-good sex film this year, I fully recommend that it be Shortbus. The movie plays out like the sex version of Shortcuts or Magnolia set in New York instead of LA. The large focal event (in lieu of earthquakes or frogs) is the Eastern Seaboard Blackout of August 2003. Combined with this ensemble of interweaving stories, the actors collaborated with the director to write their own story arcs, in the same vein as a Mike Leigh film.
The characters cross paths at Shortbus, a sexual liberation lounge that has many of the usual unusuals that you would think this type evening sex-club would attract, but mainly just normal folks looking for an experience which yields some sort of communication. There is a gay couple having relationship issues, one of them, making a home film reminiscent of Jonathan Caouette’s Tarnation (incidently a film which John Cameron Mitchell helped produce). He used to prostitute himself out and is depressed to the point of suicide. A hetero couple seem to be keeping their relationship together for the sake of keeping it together. They walk on eggshells around the fact that he cannot give her an orgasm (oh, and by the way, she is a sex therapist). There is a dominatrix who just wants to meet the right guy and settle down with a house and a cat. There is a voyeur who spies on the gay couple from the neighboring apartment. All of these characters are really just looking for a way to connect with one another in some sort of meaningful way.
Some of the stories veer into the territory that feels written over real: A sex therapist who cannot have an orgasm, the dominatrix who cannot form or have any sort of stable relationship has a name of the first 7 letters of Severance (although her real name is Jennifer Aniston – a long story). However, where Shortbus is wildly successful is that it is charming and funny, but dramatically authentic as well. The laughs are generated with the little details that crop up in peoples lives and while they are quite often embarrassing, they are what make people human. You are laughing with the characters not at them. And the sex, while not always titillating, is also humorous at times, and drives the story forward with odd little details (one character sings the American National Anthem into another ass for instance, while the other uses the erect penis for a karaoke microphone). Like many stories which celebrate New York, New York is a good enough representation for a country as complex and large as the United States. And Shortbus is one of the best examples of the celebration of America 21st century. In a just world, a movie that cannot escape the NC-17 rating, should have at least the popularity from word of mouth as The Adventures of Prascilla Queen of the Desert, if not a heck of a lot more. Shortbus comes highly recommended, even for your grandmother.