Shortbus

Starring: Lindsay Beamish, Sook Yin-Lee, Justin Bond, Paul Dawson, P.J. DeBoy

Written by: John Cameron Mitchell

Directed by: John Cameron Mitchell

Distributor: ThinkFilm

Rated: Not Rate

A camera pans over a lush, Nerf-like, oil paintinginspired digital diorama of Manhattan, occasionally zooming in to individual windows and cutting to graphic depictions of intimate sexual moments. With this opening sequence, Hedwig and the Angry Inch’s John Cameron Mitchell begins an intimate look into the nature of human sexuality in Shortbus.

While the film is virtually swimming in plot elements, much of the story focuses on three central characters. James (Paul Dawson) and Jamie (P.J. DeBoy) decide to open their longterm relationship to the possibility of dating other people. They discuss this with their therapist Sofia (Sook-Yin Lee) who is having difficulty with her own relationship. This prompts an invitation to a club known as Shortbus, a place where sexually deficient people (and really, isn’t everyone sexually deficient in a sense?) meet to catch up on all those experiences they’ve never had. Or something like that. Mitchell spends little time exploring the club itself, so the scenes not focusing directly on the central characters feel underdeveloped. This is disappointing, as many potentially interesting characters seem to inhabit the corners of the frame.

The lack of focus during group scenes would register as little more than a minor distraction, but even those people in the plot’s foreground aren’t rendered very well. The story is pasted together in such a lopsided way that even the central characters don’t have much chance to gain any depth. Just as one person begins to seem interesting, the story shifts to another. One gets the feeling that a really good film was edited out of existence in post-production. The therapist Sophia is one of the few characters on screen long enough to build up any emotional momentum.

Sophia, who has never had an orgasm (in spite of numerous attempts), embarks on a journey into Shortbus that finds her intimately interacting with the most fascinating character in the entire film; Severin (Lindsay Beamish, Panic In Motion), an offbeat, artistic dominatrix who can’t seem to open up to anyone. The conversations between the two women in a sensory deprivation chamber are the
film’s best scenes.

Mitchell uses a large cast of actors with little screen-acting experience to explore the subtle intricacies of sexual and romantic communication. It’s refreshing to see sex graphically presented from behind an honest lens that is both flawed and aesthetically pleasing. However, the fact that the film addresses sex and human communication does not necessarily mean that it’s addressing these things in a particularly compelling way.

The whole thing ends with a musical number that’s quite well produced. “We All Get It In The End” seems nice enough. It’s got a pleasant filmmusical vibe to it, but aside from shots that are meant to in some way resolve the stories of the central characters, it really feels like it belongs in a different film entirely. In the end, Shortbus is fun, but it’s not terribly coherent. VS