25/08/2007
Shortbus
‘‘Shortbus’ is a (post?)modern erotic comedy exploring the lives of a group of New Yorkers using sex to symbolise their various emotional problems. Meet Sofia, a sex therapist who (yikes!) has never had an orgasm and James and Jamie, a gay couple trying save their failing relationship with new sexual partners. At Shortbus they discuss art, music and politics. Oh, and fuck the shit out of each other while they’re at it.
Director John Cameron Mitchell told me that the aim was to confront the anxiety many of us have regarding sex by examining it up close and uncensored. Being explicit about something diffuses its tension; hence scenes of hardcore Supersex designed to break through the audience’s pain barrier (is that called the hymen?).
I’ll happily admit I’m the kind of person whose idea of talking dirty involves using phrases like ‘That’s terrific!’ at various intervals, so I was always going to struggle with the gay threesome where a guy sings ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ at top volume into the parted anus of his boyfriend who himself is using a third man’s erect penis as a microphone. Yep. Just a little bit rich for me.
At its most controversial, a guy contorts himself into a fiendish yoga position to perform oral sex on himself. Before seeing ‘Shortbus,’ autofellatio was on the list with paragliding and EuroDisney as things I vaguely wouldn’t mind experiencing some day. However, having now seen it in all its squalid glory – including the climax where he tearfully ejaculates into his own mouth – I’ll leave it.
Stealing the show is Justin Bond, playing himself as Shortbus’ mistress. He spouts enigmatic filth like ‘That’s Alice, she’s got a cunt like a wizard’s sleeve,’ before leading us into the ‘Sex Not Bombs Room,’ for a mass orgy. Curiously, the sight of so many lithe naked bodies slithering over each other isn’t that erotic. It reminded me of all the snakes from ‘Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.’
Basically, I wouldn’t describe ‘Shortbus’ as a porn film; the purpose of the sex in this movie isn’t to titillate or arouse. In this post 9/11 world exhausted with the paranoid politics of Blair and Bush, only acts of extreme liberalism can counter the forces of extreme conservatism that control our lives. That at least is the chat-up line I’ll be using at Brannigans tonight. I’ll let you know how I get on...
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