Shortbus

Shortbus is a long ride on a sexual roller coaster. The movie focuses primarily on the sliding scale that has become sexual preference and orientation in our day and age. Specifically, the film walks us through one Canasian "couples' counselor's" (read: sex therapist) journey to finding her orgasm. She describes her life as "pre-orgasmic". Shortbus is rooted in varying degrees of sexual discovery and the exploration of the emotions that lie therein.

There are multiple plots that converge: think Love, Actually meets porn with a plot. A gay couple of Jamie and James battle James' depression and Jamie's need to explore outside their five years of monogamy. Throw into the mix a self-loathing dominatrix with serious intimacy, nay interaction issues and her trust-fund baby-hipster client; a drag queen who looks like David Bowie but acts like RuPaul with a healthy dose of Patrick Swayze's character from "To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar" and runs the eponymous den of sexual exploration. Ceth, a beautiful gay model who looks for love via an online service called Yenta650 only to find himself in a triangle amidst the Jamie's as James' gay next door neighbor and stalker watches wistfully via telescope, ear piece, and high-fi camera.

While the sex scenes are gratuitous for the most part some of them unearth a vulnerability that are pivotal to the initmacy component of the plot. For example, James' depression consumes him leading to attempted suicide but a rescue by his stalker leads to a sexual experience that opens him up for Jamie once and for all. Apparently, James has never been penetrated--the perennial pitcher, this act of catching saves him from himself and enables him to "feel" Jamie's love. I'm not sure how allowing a stranger, no matter how adoring, to explore a piece of you which was kept from your partner of five years can bring the original couple closer together but in Shortbus it does just that. Similarly, Sophia (the sex therapist cum couples' counselor) does not achieve orgasm with her sole sexual partner and husband, Rob--after much agonizing in a repressed model minority way--self-climaxes in a surreal scene of winding through central park only to find her way to an isolated lush beach circa southern California meets Cambodia. At least there I can glean a the following trite lesson: You can't open yourself up to love if you don't love yourself--to put it another way, if you don't learn what gets you off you can't train your partner to do it for you.

The opening, closing , and transitionary scenes of the movie are presented as a graphically designed illustration of the Manhattan and Brooklyn: Monet meets Manet? The masterful cityscapes are true to New York in scale and scope. I felt a thrill and a chill as I watched the camera pan over Central Park onto the Upper West Side to zoom into one window and the scenario within, then move down and across the Brooklyn Bridge to illustrate another copulating couple in a window in the next borough. A clever method of transitioning between seeming unrelated plot lines till they converged into a meaningful and coherent story of intertwining sexual discovery. The colors used to graphically capture the city are muted and sketchy at best blurring into one another, perhaps a metaphor for the bi-curious within each of us. The dominatrix, Severn whose real name is ironicaly Jennifer Aniston, presents domination as a hollow series of acts void of emotion. In fact, her ineptitude to relate to other human beings is debilitating until she befriends Sophia and communes with her weekly in a sensory deprivation tank.

The oh-so-New York aspects of the film are a bit force-fed. In a monologue the geriatric, former, gay Mayor of New York delivers to Ceth at Shortbus in the earlier part of the movie. It covers the bases of AIDS, gay sex, and politics in one fell swoop and moves on to conquer depression, repression, and regression. The issue of prolonged and glorified adolscene is often attributed to the residents of our fair but sinful city. While there is not talk of past lives, the characters of James and Severn spend 5 minutes in a closet as a result of a game of spin-the-bottle and discuss their experiences as sex workers fixating specifically of the choice or lack thereof in their chosen careers. This is also an emotionally ripe scene, showcasing that in the unlikeliest places humans can and will connect.

Overall, the movie had its moments of shock value but delivered a series of messages. The big ones: safe sex is best, intimacy is important, orgasms are a girl's best friend, and stalkers save lives. Gay sex is hot, gay threesomes are hotter. The small ones: a boy can blow himself without removing floating ribs and just because you sell something does not mean you are a customer/client.

Movie Grade: B-

On a side note:
Tracey trudged into the city to see me on my 26th birthday with a bevy of gifts in tow. Highlights include a full set of Italian vocabulary books, black Uggs, a golden jewel box filled with assorted earrings and a flapper-esque necklace, a calligraphy set, a multi-striped Coach iPod cover, and a the smallest wristlet ever.