"Shortbus" (2006) - Movie Review

How often does any one confront their sexuality even to themselves? Director John Cameron Mitchell says in his interview that the films which are coming out now a day address sex in a negative tone and he wanted to take it and decorate it for what it really is made of. This is “Shortbus” which will not be enjoyable if confronting sexuality means tearing moral boundaries. But that’s the exact reason some one needs to watch it with an open mind. This is orgasmic, literally for a director visioning his artistic representation of sex laid on a flat clean surface of ultimate purity.

It is an audacious and positive approach towards a phenomenon which represents the very existence of human beings. It revolves around a sex therapist Sofia (Sook-Yin Lee) who prefers to be called a couples counselor and never had an orgasm, a gay couple Jamie (PJ DeBoy) and his lover Jamie (Paul Dawson) who prefers to be called James and is in a depressive state, a dominatrix Jennifer Aniston (Lindsay Beamish) who prefers to be called Severin and a Voyeuristic Caleb (Peter Stickles) who loves the love shared by Jamie and James but prefers to be not noticed. How many are realistically something, prefer to be some other thing and looking for their missing pieces in life? The tangling intersection of these lives in a place called Shortbus forms the film. Shortbus is like a time capsule from the hippie culture of 60s. The person Justin Bond (playing himself) who operates this place aptly portrays as, “It’s just like the 60s. Only with less hope”.

There is art in nook and corner of this film. It is hypnotic in its portrayal of the scenes involving the characters figuring out their sexual and emotional relationship with each other. I am glad that they show nudity right at your face and glad that they did not shy away from the concept of showing the orgy scenes because those are the essence of the film. It takes the sexual aspects into something of a material which can be viewed with no prejudice, fear and truly for its nakedness. But it is not about sex. It is one of the clearest forms of emotions in place. Sex and love intersects in multiple shapes and sizes. It means a lot and some times interchangeable. People are afraid of love and sex. Both are fragile and freaky but importantly too valuable to lose. The horizon “Shortbus” shows sex with so much explicit content that they take out the factor off from our minds. We are into the “Shortbus”. We may not accept it or may be not yet ready to embrace it but are in level with it.

The story and characters were developed as a project. Auditioning tapes were called on with a website ad calling applications for showing sex as an art. Tons of tapes arrived and from there the film took its shapes as the documentary of the “making” tells us. New York City just before the dawn days before the black out is taken as the time period of the events happening in the film. There are power lags and it “browns out” (a term I came to know through this film) the lights in the environment every now and then reflecting the states of these people.

It is an independent film true to its form. There is no shock factor but an enlightening daylight in the darkness of human realm to shun and avoid to look at the most beautiful thing we are been brought upon in this world. The characters so open in their sexual relationship are so closed emotionally. And Sofia is searching for her orgasm unknown of the real problem with her husband Rob (Raphael Barker). It is ironic that she being sex therapist has this problem which is like a doctor with disease not having found the cure. Here though it is not a disease but a void in her sexual life. She has made it so big of a deal that it has become a story of a legend and myth for her. That makes it even more curious and intriguing for her. James is figuring out what he is made of to be loved. Or is he ready for love at all? Jamie and James bring Ceth (Jay Brannan) a cute guy to their relationship. Ceth has a moment with an old man Tobias (Alan Mandell) who used to be the Mayor which is truly magnificent.

An art film with heart, penis and vagina treated clinically and emotionally for what their property is. The introductory scenes to each character might completely turn off some one but it made me curious, laugh and also feel for the characters. Each of them inside the walls is naked, vulnerable and in a weird manner fake too. How they find their true nature is “Shortbus”.