Shortbus

Synopsis : Sofia (Sook-Yin Lee) is a couples' counsellor who loves her husband (Raphael Barker) but has never had an orgasm. Jamie (P.J.DeBoy) a former rent boy, is restless in relationship with his boyfriend James (Paul Dawson). And Severin (Lindsay Beamish) is a dominatrix who longs for a real relationship. They all meet at Shortbus, an underground cabaret that encourages self expression and public consensual sex.

Shortbus opens with an wonderful animated sequence that starts with a super close up of the Statue of Liberty then sweeps down into Manhattan to introduce us to the main characters, all of whom are performing some kind of sex act, either on themselves or with others. The same device is used to close the film as the city comes alive to Sofia's orgasmic energy. What lies between this top and tail is far less convincing, differing little from any number of 20/30-something relationship comedy-dramas with multiple storylines except for the extensive and unusually explicit display of sex acts. In fact, unless you're a regular patron of specialist "adult" cinemas, you're going to see more screen sex in a single sitting here than you have in a lifetime, even a long one, most of it of a masturbatory nature. For example, there's a guy trying to suck his own tool (and he gets pretty close), a woman using a black dildo to get off and 3 guys performing oral sex on each other, among other delights. "Delights" is used ironically, for, the sex here is less erotic or even pornographic than anthropological. Att least from a straight perspective (Mitchell is homosexual), Shortbus might as well be a docu-drama about the effects of captivity on the sexual practices of some primate species.

Mitchell's handling of the sex is only symptomatic of the main problem of the film as a whole - that the ensemble of players never works as such. Impressed by the working techniques of Robert Altman and Mike Leigh, Mitchell worked up the script for Shortbus over a two-year period, workshopping scenes with the actors then translating them into the finished script. Whether because of Mitchell's limitations or those of his largely novice cast (and probably both) his film is a long way from those of his models or even the better examples of its now much-worn genre such as Don Roos' Happy Endings, which came out earlier this year, and which has its antecedents in Lawrence Kasadan's The Big Chill (1983), in fine, films depicting the kaleidoscopic relationships of a group of people scored to a zeitgeist pop soundtrack.

The Zeitgeist here is post-9/11 New York, the music, indie pop, the scene, an underground Brooklyn arts and sex club which gives the film its name. Some people, probably those demographically closest to the characters, swept off their feet by the unprecedented display of sexual activity (whatever happened to AIDS? one might wonder), will no doubt hail this as a work of genius but if so, it is solely in that department, the film topping the explicitness of Catherine Breillat's Anatomie de L'Enfer (2003) or Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi's Baise Moi (2000) with their decided "epater la bourgeoisie" agendas. Of the 3 stories the Severin one, which in a way holds the most tantalizing promise goes nowhere. Severin proves to be a rather ordinary little girl who (in a rather weak joke) had the misfortune to have the birth name, Jennifer Aniston. The two James are also a rather banal pair, P.J.DeBoy's idea of relationship angst being to put on a doleful expression and mope around. What does make the film bearable is Sook-Yin Lee's performance as Sofia, the "couple's counsellor" in search of an orgasm. Although one feels for her parents should they ever see this film, she illuminates the screen every time she appears and gives a no-holds barred performance that provides most of the humour of the film.

Shortbus is often-enough amusing and the use of pop songs, from the opening evergreen, Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby , performed by Anita O'Day, to the closing original number by Scott Matthew, In the End performed by Justin Bond, who also gives the film a lift, with the cast, is delightful but overall it is a disappointing offering from the director of the wonderfully original and vibrant Hedwig And The Angry Inch (2001).

 

 

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