I went to see Shortbus tonight at the local art house cinema. Shortbus is the controversial new film by John Cameron Mitchell (the guy who directed and starred in Hedwig and the Angry Inch). Most of the controversy surrounding the film is because it features many non-simulated sex scenes. I first heard of the project a few months ago when one of the stars, Sook Yin Lee, a radio host on CBC, was almost fired for starring in a "pornographic" film, at the time a whole slew of her listeners and celebrities like Francis Ford Coppola and Yoko Ono lobbied the CBC on Sook Yin's behalf and eventually the CBC backed down. I've been curious about the film ever since.
One critic described the film as Woody Allen's Manhattan with money shots. Though so much has been made of the non-simulated sex, this movie is NOT a porn. The sex though presented in its full blown glory, is never gratuitous and is essential to the story and character development. It's the same argument made about the graphic violence being essential to Passion of the Christ (although for the record I thought Passion was Mel Gibson's pointless exercise in religious masturbation).
The movie is basically about a group of characters living in a post-9/11 New York City, each with unique sexual and emotional issues. Sook Yin plays a sex therapist who's is unable to achieve orgasm herself, there's a monogamous gay couple exploring the possibility of opening their relationship and a dominatrix who is longing to form a meaningful relationship. Their lives cross paths and intertwine (the same device used in movies like Crash . . . the overrated one that won the oscar not the brilliant David Cronenberg film of the same title) at a weekly underground pan-sexual club/cabaret called Shortbus.
Leaving the film I was really amazed at how much depth and character development there was, there were some definite heavy moments and there is lots of emotion. It was kind of awkward watching real sex on the screen in a theatre with strangers at first, there's a fabulous scene featuring a gay threesome where the characters are singing the Star Spangled Banner while going down and eating each other out that had the theatre simultaneously laughing and cringing (definitely a Borat-like reaction).
Although it's real, the way sex is presented in the movie it's not designed to arouse like in pornography, it's presented as part of the human experience, inseparable from love and emotion. The style of the movie is slightly surreal, it's funny, the dialogue is peppered with humour and there's a certain whimsical quality to it (much like Hedwig). I'm still figuring out how to interpret the different elements, the movie definitely makes you think and there are certainly undertones of social commentary though it's never didactic and in the end the movie is uplifting and life affirming. I'd definitely recommend it if you're looking for something different.
