Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #805 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-06-18
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 97 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
In his aim to make an honest film about sex, John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch) has taken a somewhat documentary approach to Shortbus, a film describing various New Yorkers' sexual pathos. Framed by shots roving a homemade diorama of the city, Shortbus is comprised of vignettes featuring actors who helped craft this story of people's disconnect in sexual endeavors. Jamie (PJ DeBoy) and James (Paul Dawson), a gay couple experiencing a lull in their relationship, visit Sophia (Sook-Yin Lee), a sex therapist whose inability to orgasm results in her clients inviting her to a sex club after which the film is titled. Sophia's husband, Rob (Raphael Barker), is also willing to experiment, so the two independently embark on adventures in self-pleasure. Dominatrix Severin (Lindsay Beamish) plays a crucial role in Sophia and Rob's lives, as her search for real humanity overlaps with their desire for passion.

As each character's plot complicates, the viewer sees a similar melancholy bulldozing its way into these seemingly disparate lives. The depression is repeatedly used in comedic scenes, such as when James is asked on a date while still hospitalised for his attempted suicide. Yo La Tengo's score, which includes Animal Collective among others, lends this film a graceful ambience. Unlike porn, Shortbus has a resonance that encourages the viewer to consider one's own sex life as an important aspect of happiness. --Trinie Dalton

Synopsis
Writer/director John Cameron Mitchell follows up the cult classic Hedwig and the Angry Inch with another salacious slice of sex-laden cinema. Mitchell interweaves three separate tales of highly sexed and sexually frustrated New Yorkers, all of whom find some kind of salvation at an underground club named Shortbus. Anything goes at Shortbus--wild orgies between people from different ages, backgrounds, and sexual preferences are treated as commonplace, and most of the sex scenes shot through Mitchell's voyeuristic lens are completely unsimulated. Mitchell allows little time for his audience to pause for breath, opening Shortbus with a frantic collage of copulation and carnality that features most of his central characters. These include Sofia (Sook-Yin Lee), a sex therapist who has never reached full orgasm; gay couple James (Paul Dawson) and Jamie (PJ DeBoy); and Severin (Lindsay Beamish), a dominatrix who finds herself unable to find true love. Mitchell lets his cast of characters unravel their tales of woe, interspersing the touching and mostly sad stories with eye-popping scenes from Shortbus and swooping birds-eye shots of a computer simulated version of New York City. The director also draws heavily on an indie-rock soundtrack, making repeated and effective use of the beautiful ‘Winters Love’ by Brooklyn-based group Animal Collective. But it's the sex scenes that will really get tongues wagging, and its testament to Mitchell's fearless and uncompromising vision that he depicts sexual acts that run the full coital gamut, from amusing to titillating to shocking. Amid all the boundary-pushing there is a tender heart buried in Shortbus's central narrative, which revolves around the search for identity and acceptance.

Customer Reviews

Ban this filth!
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 / special-needs 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 alais 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 & 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 - and I expect will or already has ellicited a campaign by the Daily Mail to "BAN THIS FILTH!". It's far more extreme than Winterbottom's Nine Songs - previously the most "sexually shocking" mainstream UK film - was, and the uncensored nature of these scenes is a tool that director John Cameron Mitchell uses to convey the intensity of the sexual relationships. So, this is definitely not a film you'd want to in the presence of your parents. Whilst the orgies and ejaculations might be the reason the film has attained so much notoriety, it would be a shame if you were put off by the film's sexually explicit nature - I wouldn't have said the sex is gratuitous - it serves to demonstrate the emotionally vapid nature of some of the main characters' lives, and the director also skilfully addresses the wider emotional context. This film rarely misses a beat throughout and finishes with a lavish crescendo that can't help but make you feel that you've felt something as you leave the cinema. Don't accept any edited or censored versions.

That's another interesting way on seeing the Star Spangled Banner performed
"Shortbus" deals with many of the same issues as "Hedwig" and the "Angry Inch," but in a new and equally groundbreaking way. Yes, there is hardcore sex, and honestly, there should have been even more, it is used as another layer of paint on one of the most poignant canvases I have seen in years. This film is part of a new breed of cinema that dares to force actors to cross over the line from acting in a film and portraying a fictional character to actually being a subject in a documentary: the once strict line that distinguishes where a character begins and an actor ends has become totally blurred and is no longer recognizable for the actors or rather beautiful and real human beings who appear on screen in this film.

As much as this film is about its characters and their lives, it is about the state of underground or lack of underground art and culture in New York City, particularly the lower east side art scene - a nostalgic yearning for a time and an age of culture and community that is sadly gone in present day Manhattan. Theoretically, "Shortbus" forces us to question the nature of the spectator in a movie theater, watching a TV screen or computer monitor, or looking through the viewfinder of a camera. It is rare for any film these days to ask and provoke the kind of emotional responses and questions about the nature of spectatorship, voyeurism, censorship, viewership, and pornography while at the same time pushing the boundaries of cinema, redefining cinematic, and fusing multiple aesthetic systems that "Shortbus" does in under two hours. The actors were earnest in their efforts (and brave to perform the sex scenes), although no Oscar-winning performances I'd say. I did find Paul Dawson to be quite effective in his ability to convey emotion, esp. in the scene where he's looking out the window at PJ DeBoy. Despite not speaking or moving, we can feel his emotion.

A note about the ending without ruining anything: many people that will balk at it for not being realistic or digging deep enough or as deep as the rest of the film may be missing part of the point. The whimsical CGI animation used throughout the film should immediately tip you off to the fact that there is a magical fantasy element present in the storyline that is represented by "Shortbus" itself. This when combined with the nostalgic seedy underground art scene depicted in the film causes one to realize that the ending and resolution of each character's issues is in fact a just a continuation of that nostalgic fantasy for the bygone lower Manhattan cabaret scene, and thus adds another bitter sweet layer to the film. We can already guess the brutal reality of what will happen to each set of characters and their relationships in the film, but that doesn't mean it is what has to happen on screen. What happens inside "Shortbus" is a hopeful and optimistic fantasy set in a burlesque and erotic theatre of the absurd, what happens outside is our hardboiled reality.

If you cannot find yourself somewhere in this film, somewhere in the mythical "Shortbus," you might not actually exist.

Surprisingly good
Without being too snide, I was convinced that I wouldn't like this movie. I've been annoyed by most of the responses to the BBFC's newly liberal stance when it comes to sex on screen (Anatomy of Hell- so, so, so bad, Destricted, ditto) and thought this might just be another childish, silly, opportunistic film that shows loads of sex just because you now can.

Couple this hesitation with the fact that it's a movie set in New York and the cast are young and some of them are artists and some of them are gay artists and they're really bohemian and scene and I thought it was going to be annoying and boring.

It's actually a really tender, sincere and funny film. From the gently impressionistic swooning over the model of New York, to the sad, elegiac scene at the swimming pool (the suicide attempt) right through to the riotous end at Shortbus, it's engaging and honest and warm. I'd definitely recommend it. I was going to say come in with an open mind, but you'll probably enjoy it more if, like me, you can't help but approach with prejudice- you'll be surprised how easily they melt.