Released: September 15, 2006 (Milwaukee LGBT Film and Video Festival)
Director: John Cameron Mitchell
*****
Shortbus seems to want to shock the audience before telling a coherent story. Writer/Director John Cameron Mitchell isn't as interested in connecting the various characters in the story as he is in displaying their sexual kinks. What purpose does Caleb play for James and Jamie? Why do James and Jamie really want a third person in their relationship? What, exactly, is Shortbus? What about Ceth, he didn't fall out of the sky? Why is James preparing to kill himself? Instead, the camera focuses on James jerking off into his own mouth, Jamie singing the national anthem into Ceth's ass and an orgy scene to rival any orgy scene in mainstream movie history.
In a twist of fate, James and Jamie befriend their sex therapist (a term she doesn't like), a woman-Sophia-who has never orgasmed in her entire life. It's not for a lack of trying, since she and her husband have wildly imaginative sex; he always seems to finish before she does and he doesn't seemingly care. When the motley trio enter the sex club Shortbus, Sophia finds someone to talk her through an orgasm and the guys meet Ceth, a third in their relationship.
Honestly, I don't know what to make of Shortbus. It is daring, for sure, with its frank depictions of sexuality, though it never goes quite far enough. Certain segments of the film seem designed to shock the audience when, in the very next scene, the sex looks to be covered up. So in that sense, the film isn't exactly fluid. Take, for instance, the explicit beginning of the film in which James (Paul Dawson) contorts his body so that he can lick his own penis and, shortly thereafter, cums in his mouth. It's all done as a video camera records the action. Then there's the master shots of the Shortbus orgy room, in which arms, legs and other people cover up sex acts. We see men thrusting into women and everyone receiving oral sex, but it's never as graphic as the initial scenes.
I can understand Mitchell erring on the side of caution, not wanting to create a porn film. But in order for that to be the case, the story needed an extra polish. A guy from across the street-Caleb (Peter Stickles)-is shown to stalk Jamie and James. And, when James tries to kill himself, it's Caleb who rescues him. Even after a night of sex, we never really understand what his function in the movie is-or why James wants to kill himself. Jamie is hopelessly devoted to James; we even see the hurt in his face in the beginning of the movie when he clearly wants to have sex, yet James has just jerked off. It's James who wants to introduce a third to the relationship and Jamie goes along with it, seemingly, to please him.
Shortbus is an experiment-a failed noble experiment-but an experiment nonetheless. It wants to be revolutionary with frank talk of orgasms and how partners aren't pleasing us; the script never quite gets there. At least part of the problem is that the story was written with the actors; it's as if there is no guiding force to streamline the movie. Even the ending is out of left field with no reason for being. How do these people end up where they are?