Shortbus

Plot synopsis:
Set in contemporary New York City, Shortbus revolves around Sofia Lin (Sook-Yin Lee), who is married to the handsome but unambitious and slightly dim-witted Rob (Raphael Barker). She works as a couples counselor/sex therapist. She comes into contact with a couple: A slightly egotistical former child star Jamie (PJ DeBoy) and former prostitute James (Paul Dawson), the film's other lead character. At the outset, James suggests to his boyfriend that they open up their relationship to sex with others. During their first consultation, Sofia snaps, slaps Jamie, and then apologetically reveals her "pre-orgasmic" status. The couple suggests she attend a weekly social/artistic/sexual salon in Brooklyn called "Shortbus," which is hosted by drag artist Justin Bond (playing himself). Sofia slowly opens up to new experiences; this includes a friendship with a dominatrix who goes by the name Severin (Lindsay Beamish). Sofia's inability to achieve orgasm begins to cause conflict with Rob, who in turn begins attending Shortbus with Sofia.
James and Jamie meet a young ex-model and aspiring singer named Ceth (pronounced seth) and portrayed by Jay Brannan) and the three begin a sexual relationship. Meanwhile, James and Jamie's life is being closely watched by their across-the-street stalker neighbor, Caleb (Peter Stickles). Caleb fears the inclusion of Ceth in James and Jamie's relationship might break them up and thus destroy his ability to live vicariously through them, so he attends Shortbus, where he confronts Ceth. Sofia begins to go daily to a spa with a sensory deprivation tank to meet with Severin, and the two begin to have intense conversations. Severin begins to help Sofia loosen up sexually; Sofia helps Severin achieve a deeper human connection than she had experienced before. One evening at Shortbus, Severin discusses with Sofia the idea of giving up sex work to pursue her dream of being an artist. The two then have an unplanned sexual experience, and once again Sofia is left unsatisfied. Throughout the film, James is seen making a film about himself and his relationship. It turns out to be a suicide note. He attempts to take his own life and is rescued by Caleb, who calls for help, but is too embarrassed to wait with James for the help to arrive. He writes his phone number and email address on James' face while he is unconscious. When James wakes in the hospital, he calls Caleb. James goes to Caleb's home to be consoled, but does not contact Jamie or Ceth, neither of whom can understand why he wouldn't call them or come home.
There follows an interlocking trio of scenes showing connections between the characters' emotional problems and their sexual lives.
At Caleb's house, he and James have sex, and James allows Caleb to penetrate him, something he has never allowed anyone to do before. Afterward, in a dramatic revelation, James is seen in the window of Caleb's apartment by Jamie, who realizes in that moment that James is alive and okay.
Rob and Severin have a paid encounter where Rob asks to be flogged, something he couldn't ask Sofia to do. As this progresses, Severin loses control and Rob tries to comfort her.
Sofia seems to have a dream of struggling through an overgrown, wild forested area to a gentle seashore where she tries to achieve orgasm again. On failing, she screams, and in the real world the lights go off across the city, seemingly caused by the simultaneous and collective frustration of the characters.
The film ends with a song by Justin Bond at Shortbus during the blackout. Sofia arrives and finds Rob with Severin and after acknowledging him sits down by herself. James and Jamie also arrive followed by Ceth and Caleb. Justin's song starts on a wistful note, but as it progresses it becomes more energetic and positive thanks to the arrival of the Hungry March Band. This is mirrored in the actions and emotions of the actors. Jamie and James make out on the floor, and Ceth and Caleb start to hit it off. Rob seems to find a friend, and Severin progresses from nervous anxiety to happy elation upon the arrival of the band. Sofia engages in a threesome with a couple she has seen several times before and who appear to meet her prerequisite of "just beginning to experiment sexually" (Nick and Leah, played by Jan Hilmer and Shanti Carson), and finally achieves an orgasm, and the blackout affecting New York ends, as does the film.

Tags: cute, humor, queer

Review:
Set in modern-day New York City, a heterogeneous group of straights, gays and transgenders find common ground at Shortbus, an underground salon where people are free to explore their most carnal sexual desires with random hookups and nightlong orgies  sometimes even finding bits of wisdom along the way.The superb cast of characters of John Cameron Mitchell's "Shortbus" powerfully draws the viewer in to each of the characters' lives and problems.
Because one's comfort level with their sexuality mirrors how one relates in all other relationships, showing the raw and carnal aspect of each character so explicitly works beautifully to accurately convey their motivations and struggles.In a touching conversation, an old man identifying himself as the former mayor of New York says to the young and naive Ceth (Jay Brannan), "People come to New York to get laid ...
Like Michael Winterbottom, who made the explicit "9 Songs," writer/director John Cameron Mitchell says he wants to show true human sexuality as part of his story.
Meanwhile, all of these characters meet regularly at Shortbus, a sex club where everyone is free to be whatever they want to be, where no one's a freak because everyone's a freak, and where, most importantly, everyone feels a sense of community in a scary post-9/11 world.Such is "Shortbus," John Cameron Mitchell's emotionally affecting follow up film to his dazzling debut, "Hedwig and the Angry Inch." By now, everyone knows that "Shortbus" contains many scenes of quite explicit sex.
However, it is to Mitchell's great credit that I left the film not remembering the sex as much as I remembered some of the beautiful emotional moments, of which "Shortbus" is chock full.I saw a screening of this at the Chicago International Film Festival, and two of the actors, Sook-Yin Lee and Lindsay Beamish, were on hand to answer questions.
It's all ultimately wondrous, and one of the great revelations of the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, where the audiences tend to be snotty and conspicuously unimpressed--but the screening of this movie was followed by parades and parties in the streets, with people carrying the stars on their shoulders, like they used to do with Verdi on opening nights in Milan.
Oh, and when the young dominatrix is on screen you can hear members of the audience murmuring "It's the Jennifer Jason Leigh" part.As for the hardcore scenes, "Shortbus" fails in the same way other legit movies have failed when they tried to incorporate real sex into plot.
This film is an unabashedly sexually charged and frank look at people, their relationships and how sex is intertwined into it.The treatment is both naïve yet incredibly sophisticatedeven while showing very intense sexual scenes, it doesn't sugarcoat or judge them, but merely explores them in a way that most American cinema is afraid to do.It is as one of the actors says "Voyeurism is Participation" (or somewhat close to that).
Director John Cameron Mitchell dares to take a retro-clinging America into the twenty-first century with this brave, humanistic art-house film wherein an ensemble cast of little known actors and numerous non-actors portray characters exploring emotions and relationships in a New York City underground club called the Shortbus.As a gay couple with relationship problems, James (Paul Dawson) and Jamie (P.J. DeBoy), consult a young sex therapist named Sofia (Sook-Yin Lee) who, as it turns out, is in need of some therapy herself.
And the film's music captures a progressive feel, and varies from nouveau jazz to the stirring humanistic anthem "In The End", performed by the entire cast, and led with flair by Justin Bond.Unorthodox both in substance and style, in a society that too often demands traditional correctness, "Shortbus" is Mitchell's cinematic plea for cultural compassion and mercy, tolerance and acceptance.
Of course, just as was the case in the early days of explicit sex on screen, the "redeeming social value" on display here is nothing more than a way for the intellectual watching this film to explain the wet spot in their crotch as being sweat expelled from a gland which occurred in the process of their deep analysis of the complex meaning of deep anal thrusts and auto-fellatio.To say that Shortbus is a bad film technically would be a lie for I must admit that despite my not finding any memorable images throughout my viewing of the film, I felt that the cinematography was acceptable and the acting, although certainly not award worthy, was fine.
However today, the climate has changed in such a way that although explicit sex in films is not deemed universally acceptable, censors and prudes have become comfortable enough with the idea that a film can still play general theatres despite its explicit content that many visionary filmmakers have taken bold steps to include hardcore sex in some of their more recent pictures.I think that taking any more time explaining the ridiculousness of heaping praise on a cinematic item which, in all honesty, has nothing more going for it than a near constant stream of boring sex acts, I shall instead make a suggestion to every person (critics and audience members alike) who took this film as a revolutionary piece of cinema to be encouraged to watch at least a few of the following sexually explicit titles (listed in no real order):Bacchanale (John & Lem Amero, 1970) Ken Park (Larry Clark, 2002) Through The Looking Glass (Jonas Middleton, 1975) Cruising (William Friedkin, 1980) The Image (Radley Metzger, 1975) Do Me Evil (Toby Ross, 1975) Both Ways (Jerry Douglas, 1975) Sometimes Sweet Susan (Fred Donaldson, 1974) Skin Flicks (Gerard Damiano, 1978) The Opening Of Misty Beethoven (Radley Metzger, 1975) Cafe Flesh (Stephen Sayadian, 1982) Defiance Of Good (Armand Weston, 1974) Midnight Desires (Shaun Costello, 1975) (Anna) Obsessed (1977) Score (Radley Metzger, 1972) Roommates (Chuck Vincent, 1981) Corruption (Roger Watkins, 1983) Thundercrack!
First of all I am a "straight" man so I wont let this cloud my review of this film...I found this movie hard to watch at times but the fact that this was toted as "real" sexuality peaked my interest in the first place.
But its not all about just throwing people out there to have sex and film it.There are deeper subjects that John Cameron Mitchell tackles, such as fears of not being loved as you once were by your partner, trying to achieve orgasm that a lot of women might have a problem and just finding true love....As I said about the car wreck, even though the film made me incredibly uncomfortable I found myself trying to open my mind to other things so I kept looking back at the film, to see what the message thats trying to be portrayed to those with a closed mind....
This film tries hard to make art out of what is essentially a seemingly random collection of sex scenes, emotional half-truths and lots and lots and LOTS of navel-gazing, by a bunch of pretty people whose lives seem as boring, tedious and uninteresting as the nameless "characters" we see in porn.Well, this is porn basically.
For heterosexuals, we have Michael Winterbotton's 9 Songs; for those who like 'em a little younger, Ken Park should do the trick; and for anyone who can't make up their mind quite what they're into, there's this.Director John Cameron Mitchell's film revolves around a group of New Yorkers who visit Shortbus, a club where the sexually adventurous converge to indulge in all manner of carnal acts with other open-minded (and open-orificed) individuals.
Sook-Yin Lee plays Sofia, a sex therapist unable to achieve an orgasm; Paul Dawson and PJ DeBoy play a gay couple, James and Jamie, who have relationship issues; and Lindsay Beamish is Severin, a dominatrix who just wants to be loved: with the help of several other club regulars, these emotionally challenged individuals learn to change their lives for the better.As an avant-garde, art-house comedy/drama, Shortbus ain't much cop—a series of rather dull scenes full of pretentious introspective musing, tedious chit chat and laugh-free comedy.
While graphic, it is hard for me to think that someone would not be able to deal with seeing the sex in this movie, especially since we are exposed to so much violence in other movies that has little redemptive value, but somehow seems to not trouble as many people.The only flaw that i saw in the film was that it was somewhat too self conscious.
Instead the film simply plods along, trying to shock you or wow you with more explicit sex (which by the way, aren't simply scenes of doing the act, but rather of the more bizarre types you'd seen in porn.
Among the main characters are Sofia, a sex therapist who has never achieved orgasm, a gay couple both named Jamie, and a dominatrix who goes by the name Severin (the revelation of her real name is one of the film's funniest moments).
"Shortbus" is an interesting perspective on the loose sexual morals of the hip New York underground scene and shows us how these people apparently soothe their insecurities with lots of promiscuous sex, but I found it too distant from my own way of life, too shallow and too one-sided to really appeal to me.
This made it come off as a bit pretentious.If you're a homosexual male in conflict with your emotions, you may really like this film and consider it a very heartwarming experience, but for anyone else I'd recommend you go watch and of the other films I mentioned if you want to see an art house film about sex and relationships that's refreshing and different from anything you've seen before..
There is joy, frustration, depression, and hope all mixed together to create one of the best movies of the year.The story is centered around a woman couples counselor's journey to experience an orgasm and a gay couple's, both named Jamie, need to open up in order to find the true love they share.
Paul Dawson, as one of the Jamies, is engaging in autofellacio while filming his video project, Sook-Yin Lee, the sex therapist, is making love in all sorts of ways with her husband, and Lindsay Beamish is dominating a John in a hotel room.
Shortbus is a place for misfits to come together for art, music, film, and sex, to be with equals, never being questioned for what their motives are, but instead accepted for just being human.
For me personally, it felt like my search was finally over for this is the way I had always hoped that sex could and would be shown on screen : as an integral and important part of people's lives, full of joy as well as anxiety.
All these characters regularly congregate at the Shortbus club, run by real life underground cult figure Justin Bond, a place where people of various sexual tastes and inclinations can get to know each other very intimately, the only boundaries being those that they impose upon themselves.Well aware that his movie was going to acquire a notorious reputation for its non-simulated sexual content before most people would have had a chance to see for themselves, Mitchell immediately follows the opening credits with three cross-cut explicit encounters ending in three back to back pop shots.
In the opening scene of John Cameron Mitchell's provocative new film, SHORTBUS, James (Paul Dawson) sits immersed in his bathtub.
Broken up by sweeping spurts of an animated New York City (strikingly animated by John Bair), James bends over backwards for some good old fashioned auto-fellatio until his boyfriend, Jamie (PJ DeBoy), comes home; sex therapist, Sofia (Sook-Yin Lee) gets busy with her husband (Raphael Barker) all over their apartment before she fakes an orgasm rather convincingly; and dominatrix/prostitute, Severin (Lindsay Beamish), whips her latest John while he asks her views on world events and adds his own, uh, personal squiggles to the Jackson Pollock above his bed.
I know that SHORTBUS is John Cameron Mitchell's second film but that's not the kind of "sophomore" I refer to when I call this film "sophomoric." An ensemble piece about love and sex in New York City, SHORTBUS has a good deal of laughs and poignant observations but it's nearly usurped by its "film school senior project" aesthetic.Reminiscent of countless films I've endured at various "underground" film festivals; SHORTBUS sports uneven acting and relies to heavily on its "frank treatment of human sexuality." That is to say, there are a lot of boobs, butts, and penises on screen in various states of arousal.
A disappointing and sometimes very boring movie, which tries to highlight particular New York sexual neuroses (done already ad nauseam in stuff like Sex & The City) in a particularly graphic way: erections, cum shots, group sex, deviant sex positions, the lot.
At first glance this sexually explicit comedy drama might seem like a porn movie, but delve deeper and you discover a truly moving and emotional film with exceptional acting.
I do not want to believe that this proof will be the only one in decades.We need at least a couple more movies like this, since we are all existing through sex and emotions, and we should enjoy the short time we have.
Sure there's REAL LIVE SEX, but it's definite not used gratuitously without purpose, as should be obvious given the themes of the movie.Shortbus does not reinforce any stereotypes about gay men much in the same way that is does not claim that all Chinese-Canadian women have never had an orgasm.
When New York creates a worthwhile film that can't be shown there, by default it becomes like a gift to the rest of the world.Sexually explicit mainstream American movies are about as rare as human rights features surfacing from China.
Shortbus, a salon for the gifted and challenged....The story is based around Brooklyn's D.U.M.B.O. club (called ShortBus in this film  a reference to the shorter yellow buses that are provided for less-able kids in NY) and follows the crossing of paths of the main protagonists therein: Sofia - a sex therapist ("I prefer 'couples councillor') who is "pre-orgasmic" and her partner Rob, a gay couple - Jamie and James, one of whom is manic depressive, and looking to open up the relationship, and a dominatrix by the alias of Severin (who is just looking for a "real human interaction"), all stage managed by Justin Bond  the mistress of Shortbus.Set against the electrical brown and black-outs that afflicted Manhattan shortly after 9/11, this film sets out to contrast the intensity of their sexual energy and the frequent absence of emotional depth ("I can see the love, but it stops at my skin")  successfully using the parallel of how day to day the energy of the city (the sex) keeps it ticking over, but you need to feel the intimacy of love (the black outs that didn't lead to the widespread looting the NYPD predicted but instead acted as a cohesive moment for the NYC communities).The film is extremely sexual graphic in places  far more so than Winterbottom's Nine Songs was  and the uncensored nature of these scenes is a tool that John Cameron Mitchell uses to demonstrate the intensity of the sexual relationships.
Wherever those boundaries are, "Shortbus" attempts to move them with its highly open displays of sexuality some might consider deviant or perverse, to say little of its equally graphic presentations of a variety of sex acts.This is a film completely for adults; mature adults at that.
They all end up meeting at a place called "Shortbus" which seems to be a sex club for any sexual orientation.The movie starts right off with hardcore explicit sex scenes with all the main characters.
The thing is, that "Shortbus" is suggesting that modern, open-minded people deal with sex the way these wacky characters from this Factory-like club deal with it, but there's nothing real in there.
This will only encourage people who are against explicit sex scenes in movies, when really that's not the reason why "Shortbus" is a failure..
I haven't been inspired to write comments about a film in a long time, but Shortbus had me literally reeling in my seat from the first ten minutes.We are so screwed up today as a society of people and we don't know why we cannot connect with each other and form meaningful relationships both sexually and emotionally or find that special partner who we're supposed to love that's supposed to make us complete.
What he has created in this important experimental film SHORTBUS is not only a fascinating probe into the complexities of contemporary sexuality but also a group of relationship stories that stand on terra firma and are not merely a matrix for the frank sexuality from which they are derived.John Cameron Mitchell visits the relationships of several couples: a Canadian Chinese couples therapist/sex therapist (Sook-Yin Lee) who describes herself as "pre-orgasmic - she has never had an orgasm - married to a stay at home man (Raphael Barker): a young gay couple Jamie (PJ DeBoy) and James (Paul Dawson) who are considering opening up their monogamous relationship; a Dominatrix (Lindsay Beamish) and her long time male client among others.
The film is not uncritical of this illusion - one that affects an awful lot of people - but on the whole the movie sympathises with its dramatis personae, and is forgiving of their, and by extension our own, follies.The acting is variable, the gentle pace slackens woefully towards the end as Things Get Serious, but it's all smiles again for the finale, in a Fellini-like way.It's the first fifteen minutes that will earn Shortbus its place in cinema history: it manages to show very explicit sex without being remotely titillating, let alone pornographic.
Shortbus uses sexuality as a story telling device in which characters of the film introspectively explore both themselves and the meaning of humanistic relationships.
Sex scenes are part of the movie, because sex is part of the life of the characters.Yet, beyond this the film tries to say more about relationships and also to provide a political message.
Shortbus feels like a movie whose only purpose is to show raw and graphic sexuality.