Director:
John Cameron Mitchell
Cast:
Sook-Yin Lee….Sofia
Paul Dawson….James
Lindsay Beamish….Severin
Adam Hardman….Jesse, the John
PJ DeBoy….Jaime
Raphael Barker….Rob
ThinkFilm presents Shortbus. Screenplay by John Cameron Mitchell. Running time: 102 minutes. Unrated. Theatrical release Oct. 4, 2006. DVD released March 13, 2007.
The Movie
This is not a movie for the squeamish. If you consider The Wedding Crashers a sinful movie in its depiction of sexuality; you’ll be heading to confession after five minutes. If you voted for the Defense of Marriage Act; this movie will be offensive. If you’re eager to see a documentary on special needs students; this film will not be educational. Shortbus is not a film for anyone who has issues watching hedonistic debauchery. This film will test your cinematic gag reflex. Can you handle seeing a guy giving himself a blowjob? What Kevin Smith talked about in Clerks, John Cameron Mitchell delivers.
This film could be considered Woody Allen-esque. It is all about New York City and the people that inhabit it. Except instead of merely talking about their sexual hang ups, we see their problems in action. As was said on the Manhattan based crime series Naked City, “There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.” Mitchell is giving us about a dozen stories and all of them involving naked people.
Sofia is a sex therapist who tries to enhance her clients’ bliss. She has a lot of sex with her husband, Rob. They nail every page of The Kama Sutra during their marathon sessions, but she can’t orgasm. She needs help. Her husband secretly visits fetish websites to beat off at the sight of others being flogged. Severin is a professional Domme that enjoys torturing a rich client, but she’s got a lot of issues restrained beneath her leather corset. James and Jaime seem like a happy couple. Their voyueristic neighbor can’t see the cracks growing. James is interested in exploring threesomes, but he has an ulterior motive. All of these characters meet up at the Shortbus, an outlaw nightclub that has no dress code. While these people want to view themselves as sexually open, they’re hiding things from each other and themselves. They can’t completely accept pleasure within their sexuality. They spend too much of their energy maintaining a calculated front. Poetically the film shows this by having the lights blink periodically.
Mitchell’s first feature was the Sundance winning musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch. While this film isn’t a proper song and dance spectacular, the Shortbus club features a house band performing tunes by Yo La Tengo and others. The finale turns into a Broadway moment with the host’s song and characters’ motions matching up. There’s also a singing of the National Anthem that will never be duplicated at the Super Bowl.
While most of the action is flesh based, they created a 3-D digital version of New York City that appears like a Gary Panter cityscape. The camera roams around this Mock York to let us know where in the action is going down. We fly over the hole where the World Trade Center Towers. Inside an apartment bedroom with a view of the hole we encounter a BDSM session. Life goes on in the Big Apple.
The cast is a bunch of newbies since it’s rare that an established actor would dare have sex on the screen (outside of Oscar nominee Chloe Sevigny). None of the ensemble seem out of their league in scenes. And nobody looks like they’re having sex just to be on camera. The stand out of the cast is Sook-Yin Lee as the sex therapist that needs more help than she can give others. She has amazing reactions as she peeks around the Shortbus and explores the various forms of debauchery. She is not jaded by the carnality.
Shortbus won’t appeal to a lot of people. But for those who do, it will become the “you have to see this” DVD when friends visit. The story has more depth than a final season episode of Queer As Folk. Mitchell made a film that achieves the mythical balance between hardcore sex and soul exposing drama.
The DVD
VIDEO:
The picture is 1.85:1 anamorphic. The transfer is pristine. There are several different formats mixed in with the 35mm action so the texture varies.
AUDIO:
The soundtracks are 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround and 2.0 Dolby Digital Stereo. Mitchell and most of the cast reunite to create a commentary track. Because of the experimental nature of the film, the conversation deals with the process. Also you get to hear Sook-Yin Lee squirm when her first sex scene appears. The subtitles are in Spanish and French.
EXTRAS:
Gifted and Challenged: The Making of Shortbus (30:31) explains how Mitchell cast the film. You will be amazed to see how many bags of mail they received with audition tapes. The casting process involved the actors listing which cast members they’d want to screw. The film follows the nearly two years of cast improvs that Mitchell used to shape the script. Plus you’ll learn about the female condom. Michael Sean Kaminsky does a stellar job capturing how this unusual cinematic collaboration occurred.
How to Shoot Sex: a docu-primer (8:15) give us a second look at what went on to “create” the orgy room. You can watch the raw footage or listen to Mitchell and Sook-Yin Lee breakdown the various couples. Mitchell seems sad that he couldn’t allow himself to disappear in the heaving pile of flesh.
Deleted/Extended Scenes (29:40) has seven moments that were trimmed from the final film. The biggest thing salvaged from the cutting room floor is the voyeur constantly talking on his cellphone about work issues. This scenes might have be snipped since his job is personal assistant to the President’s twin daughters.
Thanks to the Shortbusriders is a list of folks who visited the website for Shortbus. In the interest of full disclosure, my name is in this section. But I have had nothing to do with the film or the filmmakers.
