Shortbus
What can one say about Shortbus without painting oneself into a corner? Shortbus and its performers are brave, talented, self-involved (explained later) and worthy of attention. This is a movie that would be weird to watch with a family member, a lover, or alone. [For the record, I opted for alone.] The actors agreed with director John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig & The Angry Inch) to perform real life sex acts in the course of the story. So what you see is real. It is a testament to Mitchell’s power as a director for his actors to have such trust in him and to have created such a work together, one I suspect will be overshadowed by the seeming sensationalist nature of the film. Unlike the idea of Chloe Sevigny fellating producer/writer/director/star of The Brown Bunny, Vincent Gallo, for real on screen in an egotistical plot point, Shortbus’ actors don’t seem to be being exploited in any way, nor positioned to gratify some hidden vanity of Mitchell, who remains offscreen.
The themes and anxieties these characters are dealing with are of a sexual nature. Sure, some of it could have been implied; as many of us know, the dynamics between people in the real moment of sexual action are often quite different (and more revealing emotionally) than the PG-13 lowering to the bed and fade out. Shortbus is intensely graphic, sometimes even hilariously so, but never filthy. It’s more about intimacy and self-knowledge and boundaries and the ripples that sex makes in the fabric of our total interaction than it is about actual copulation.
Shortbus attempts to chart boundaries that are infrequently explored in film (partially because of the MPAA and partially because of the slippery slope of exploitation) and here in this world lies enormous human drama. So many people, especially in hypocritically Puritanical America, have debilitating hang-ups about sex and intimacy and their bodies and the only way to address them in a film is fully.
That said, if you are in the slightest bit uncomfortable with any “alternative lifestyle” other than the biologically direct method of starting a baby, you will most definitely be uncomfortable in Shortbus. Filmically, I can say “your loss,” and I suspect many in this New York community would expand that to physically as well. I’m not here to judge. You, I mean.
New York is a city deeply in love with itself, but in its own way it is deeply schizophrenic too. New Yorkers in this movie are not the ones at Woody Allen’s parties, or hanging out with Sarah Jessica Parker either. But this is a real and vital community here and elsewhere (read Dan Savage’s Savage Love column for samples) and they are presented very democratically here. I’m not talking just “gay” or “promiscuous” or “exhibitionist,” there is more here than just simple labels.
The story and character development was all done workshop-style with the cast, as was some of the music. The rest of the score is by Yo La Tengo, and it’s a good listen. If you want to explore the ideas of love and emotional permeability while seeing a narratively complex world of sexual self-exploration to which few are privy, then this is the movie for you. Otherwise, run for your life.
