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Austinist Film Review: Shortbus
John Cameron Mitchell must've had a rough time explaining this movie to producers. The follow-up to his multimedia smash Hedwig And The Angry Inch, Shortbus takes a light-hearted look at a wide spectrum of romantic entanglements in post-9/11 New York; but, rather than starting with a complete script, Mitchell built the story around improvisations with a (mostly unknown) cast willing to, um, really do it on camera.
Yeah, the movie has real sex in it; that’s the hook which has caught the attention of the novelty-starved media, for which the film would otherwise be just another indie “romcom.” Front-loaded with most of the action that could be interpreted as “risqué,” Shortbus opens with a bang but quickly eases into a casually observed comedy of neuroses that goes heavy on candor and light on Catholic guilt.
The taboo on hardcore scenes in the movies has been broken many times over, mainly overseas but also in domestic films by Jane Campion and Vincent Gallo. But it's one of the first to approach its thorny subject matter from such a humanistic perspective; neither a war-of-the-sexes screed, an emotionally fraught downer, nor a ham-fisted shockathon, the film takes sex for what it is: as a pleasurable, occasionally mundane, fact of life that most people still manage to pump full of their own insecurities. The narrative takes a group of unrelated characters—an emotionally stunted dominatrix, a gay couple burdened with trust issues, and a sexually unfulfilled marriage counselor—and thrusts them into the titular location, a weekly salon-party where the young and the fabulous go to hang out and experiment with, among other things, group sex. “Shortbus” is a reference to the diminutive shuttles reserved for special-needs children, but stands as a metaphor for the American condition: where does equality stand if minorities have to isolate themselves in order to be free? In a political climate intent on legislating human behavior, Mitchell takes a refreshingly life-affirming position on the complicated entanglements, both emotional and physical, legal and illegal, that make love special.
The movie takes great delight in negotiating its characters out of their particular sexual blockage—every character leaves the show in better shape than they arrived—and, while it probably won't play well to even mildly conservative audiences, seems quite tame compared to the sea of pornographic violence and subhuman lowbrow comedy America currently settles for at the movies. Ironically, it’s also probably the only movie you’ll see this year in which a grown man fellates himself.
Shortbus opens at the Dobie today.
