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In the opening montage of the latest film from the man who brought us Hedwig and the Angry Inch, we see a straight couple athletically fucking their way through a veritable kama sutra of positions, a man working on his autofellatio technique and a punk dominatrix giving a client the abuse for which he has paid. Toto, we are most definitely not in Kansas anymore.
We are, in fact, in post–September 11 New York, where a diverse cast of characters cross paths in a sex club, looking for sex and maybe something more. Jamie (DeBoy) and his boyfriend, James (Dawson), are an adorable couple (matching names, how cute!), but something is clearly bothering James, who has proposed opening up the relationship. The couple’s therapist Sofia (Lee) is also facing a relationship problem with her husband (Barker); though she advises couples on matters of sex, she has never had an orgasm. Jamie and James invite her to Shortbus, a sex club where, as the song says, anything goes. There, Sofia meets Severin (Beamish), the dominatrix who can’t open herself up to people. The spark between them makes Sofia wonder if she needs to explore lesbianism. James and Jamie, meanwhile, hook up with Ceth (Brannan), a male model looking for a husband. In James and Jamie, he thinks he may have found two.
Despite a few forced moments, Mitchell provides the most sex-positive film we can remember, even while capturing the often difficult way sex gets tangled up in other things. Many recent films have featured actual, honest-to-God sex, but they almost always make it something dirty or sad. Mitchell is like an exuberant modern-day Walt Whitman, urging us all to sing the body electric, even if it means singing, as one characters memorably does, into another person’s asshole.—Hank Sartin
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