Shortbus uses sex to show our attempts (and failures) at human connnection

What is Shortbus? Is it an underground New York City sex club for the gifted and challenged? Is it a fable of sexual reconstruction?

Maybe it’s an antidote to the cycle of movies that present sex as either an act of pure titillation or a secret, closeted exchange that we need to be protected from — even though numerous random acts of violence are presented in film so regularly that they nullify their destructive consequences.

Maybe Shortbus is a vehicle and the engine that drives it — or better yet, its fuel — is sex. The proprietor of the club Shortbus in John Cameron Mitchell’s film describes it as “a place for the gifted and challenged.” He’s drawing an analogy to the short school buses that transport disabled or challenged children to school (as opposed to the big yellow buses for the mainstream kids).

You know, the “normals.”

Shortbus challenges the notion of what’s normal, sexually speaking, for a group of New Yorkers seeking a connection and a degree of normalcy in their lives and relationships. Mitchell creates a fable that reconstructs this vital element of human interpersonal dynamics and connects the sexual element so often discarded from those dramatic Hollywood narratives seeking to build beautifully rendered beasts in soft focus.

In Hedwig and the Angry Inch, his underground Rock & Roll fantasy turned the spotlight on one man’s journey to become the person of his dreams. Here, he exposes our quest for physical fulfillment.

Notice I didn’t say love, but that might be a part of the solution, too.

Sofia (Sook-Yin Lee) is a sex therapist who has never experienced an orgasm, either alone or with her husband Rob (Raphael Barker), who does everything in his power to help her reach this end in marathon sessions. She’s counseling James (Paul Dawson) and Jamie (P.J. DeBoy), a gay couple struggling with issues of satisfaction that lead them to involve another player, Ceth (Jay Brannan), in their relationship. And there’s the voyeur Caleb (Peter Stickles), who spies on James to earn a degree of pleasure.

As Mitchell moves us from place to place, into the windows and lives of these characters, his cityscape is one of hand-drawn simplicity and a child-like naiveté. From the outset, though, we are given a voyeuristic perspective.

We peep on Caleb as he watches the rather flexible James give himself a blowjob, and we share the initial round-robin sex session between Sofia and Rob. We also come to realize that she lies to him about achieving an orgasm, in essence lying about the very foundation of their relationship.

The need for fulfillment and the blunt display of sexual acts of all types will likely shock audiences not used to sex being used as a tool outside of pornography. But Mitchell reclaims the act from a moral framework and allows it and the quest for sexual discovery to express human longing.

While each of the characters fails to achieve satisfaction despite reaching climax, we’re forced to wonder about what else they seek — and possibly question what we’re so afraid of in our most naked moments.

Shortbus is indeed for the gifted and challenged, if only we’d realize that label includes all of us. (tt stern-enzi) Grade: A