“Shortbus” is a legitimate movie made by respected film professionals. It also has real, honest-to-gosh, unsimulated sex in it.
You can imagine which of those two sentences will bring more people to the theater. Still, “Shortbus” is enjoyable mainly because of the talent behind the camera.
The movie is unabashedly designed as a celebration of sex, which puts it in direct opposition to many recent films that have played around with explicit sexuality (the dour “9 Songs,” for instance). Director John Cameron Mitchell, who did “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” a few years ago, clearly wants to remind his public of pleasure, not terror.
The film begins with what can only be described as a bravura sequence that cuts around a handful of different sexual activities in different locations. And yes, uh, these are definitely not faked.
We will follow these characters throughout the movie, but one becomes the center: Sofia (Sook-Yin Lee), a therapist who has a lively sex life with her husband but has never had an orgasm. (She describes herself as “pre-orgasmic,” a hopeful touch.)
The movie is dead set on bringing her an orgasm. Thanks to the help of a gay couple she’s been counseling, she finds herself at a kind of underground sex salon that’s about as sleazy and threatening as a malt shop. It’s called Shortbus.
We also keep up with the gay couple (Paul Dawson, P.J. DeBoy) as they sort out their rocky relationship, and check in with a professional dominatrix (Lindsay Beamish) who is the least defined of the major characters.
Mitchell developed the storylines over a period of months, in collaboration with the cast. That could account for a certain fuzzy casualness, but it’s also why the people appear lived-in and real.
Cheerleading for sex leaves a few uncomfortable questions unaddressed, but “Shortbus” is, after all, a comedy. It has songs, zingy one-liners and a hilarious supporting performance by Justin Bond, as the cross-dressing master of ceremonies (or whatever he is) at Shortbus. And of course the movie has the sex – which seems less naughty as the movie goes on. Uh-oh: “Shortbus” has accomplished its subversive goal.
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