Review of Shortbus
Year: 2006 Reviewer: Chris Docker
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. The folks back home ain't gonna like it! Meet a group of 20 and 30 -some individuals. The loves and lives and heartaches of these very convincing characters could be the subject of any good late night drama such as This Life. But as the story lines are very much to do with sexual dynamics underpinning their relationships, censoring would be as silly as shooting Jaws without getting wet.
Sofia is a couples counsellor and happily married. Her clients range from a conservative pair needing to discuss common psychosexual questions of marriage to a young gay couple in a long term relationship wondering whether to experiment. The emotional luggage these two men bring with them causes Sofia to get angry with one of them. Instantly recognising her reaction as unprofessional, she not only apologises but realises it is based on her own suppressed sense of sexual inadequacy. They suggest a club of theirs to her where she hopes to confront her feelings in the starkest terms.
The club is called Shortbus - "for the gifted and the challenged." It combines avant garde performance art, a visually arresting mix of people from the edge (for instance, transvestite, dominatrix), people of different shapes, ages and sexual ambiance, as well as a challenging atmosphere and sections that range from trendy discourse to an orgy room. If that last phrase caught your attention more than the rest of this review so far, fear not, you have been well inoculated with graphic sexuality long before you get to that scene and it will have no more shock value than going skinny dipping with a crowd of friends in your teens.
There is no need to see Shortbus if you find graphic sex in film offensive per se. There is no need to have it thrust upon you, because it will only be shown in cinemas where you have made the conscious choice to purchase a ticket for a film that openly warns about such scenes. On the other hand, if you want to make pronouncements about sex and art you should see the film before passing judgment, especially as many people will want to make up their own mind. If you like good cinema and do not have mental blocks about the above, see it. It's not a film you need to be embarrassed watching with friends either: it's funny, sensitive, engaging, and full of real characters that you can really care about.
One other taboo should be mentioned, but primarily because it touches on Shortbus' greatest achievement: a fully fledged drama taking on board the modern approach to gender espoused by philosophers such as Judith Butler. This film is about the people rather than about whether they are straight, gay, fetishist or whatever. "There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender," was the deconstructionist approach that allowed Butler to assert human sexual individuality without primary reference to gender. We are able to focus on Sofia, James and Jamie, Ceth and 'Severin' (Jennifer) just as people, even though their sexual lives are pretty way out by many standards. But when our characters are having sex, they do it their way, so if watching two men having sex after seeing a man and a woman getting it on will make you vomit, then stay at home and upchuck all over your Urban Etiquette for God-Fearing Moral Pygmies and leave this film to the grown-ups.
Avoiding or faking sex when clearly appropriate in a film is grotesque. When Warhol produced Flesh for Frankenstein, there was a hilarious send-up where, mindful that scenes of oral sex and homosexuality would not be distributable, two characters seem, off camera, to be indulging. The camera pans back. We see the 'blow-job' is really performed on someone's armpit. Great black comedy, but serious approaches to sexuality could not easily be shown then. Sadly for New Yorkers, Shortbus will have difficulty getting mainstream certification there now.
Shortbus opens with a artist's impression of NY, buildings beautifully morphed. The landscape looks like a glowing circuit board - neatly analogous to the 'circuit board' between brains and genitals. Sometimes we can't find the right pathway or sometimes it gets blocked. Just as we have to find our way around a city, so in Shortbus the clientèle are interested in finding their own optimum neural clicks. Sometimes it works, sometimes it just flicks out, especially when we are starting.
I gasped in shock at one scene as dominatrix Severin administers a lashing to an inexperienced submissive. She has a Pollock-style painting on her wall (the famous artist who flicked, dripped and poured paint onto his canvas). Almost reminiscent of the slapstick scene from There's Something About Mary (when the masturbating man gets cum in his hair) our submissive shoots it - well - you know where. I jumped in my seat (I like Pollock and was traumatized at the sight his painting being defaced, even if it wasn't for real.) The languorous jazz score is perfect for Shortbus - atmospheric and reminds us of how jazz opposed and eventually encompassed mainstream. NY is, "where people are still willing to bend over to let in the new," says an elderly gent. Then, with a wickedly raised gay eyebrow adds, "Or the old . . ."
Shortbus is imaginatively directed and 100% American, more in the tradition of Larry Clark than European censor-busting movies. In a very different vein to, say, Breillat, it nevertheless conforms to her criteria that, distinct from when we watch pornography, we care about the characters and invest emotionally in them. If you survive the first ten minutes of Shortbus, the ending and totality of the film will be an experience to treasure.
Rating: 9/10
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