You've got to get on to get off

For a brief shining moment in the 70's, during the "porno chic" era, there was a dream (a wet one, perhaps) among some filmmakers that mainstream Hollywood films could be made with scenes of hardcore sex, not just for titillation but in the service of legitimate narrative thrust. It never really happened here, although there have been a handful of European films with explicit sex scenes (and at least one American indie film, The Brown Bunny, which was a critical and commercial disaster). The movie rating system is one big hurdle (and to my mind, not so much the system itself but the way the ratings are handled by theaters and communities, but that's a different blog rant), and it's not at all clear to me that this kind of thing could work well aesthetically. The only mainstream films with explicit sex I've seen are Caligula and Devil in the Flesh, and frankly both were interesting only as highbrow porn. The sex was almost completely incidental to Caligula, and though integral to the plot of Devil, it didn't make it a better film.

John Cameron Mitchell, best known for Hedwig and the Angry Inch, has made an indie narrative film with hardcore sex scenes. Though the movie, Shortbus, didn't ultimately come together for me, it is an honorable attempt and, had it been made in the 70s, it might have triggered a whole new genre of film. Shortbus focuses on the sex lives of seven New Yorkers, including a female couples counselor who has never had an orgasm, her unemployed porn-addicted husband, a gay male couple who are thinking about getting into a menage a trois, and a lonely dominatrix named Severin whose real birth name, when revealed, provides the movie's funniest moment. Their lives intersect at an after-hours sex club/cabaret/meeting room called Shortbus, presided over by drag performer Justin Bond, playing himself. Though all the story lines are rather melodramatic, they all seem to have relatively happy endings--though a major fault of the film, for me, is that the most intriguing character, Severin, doesn't really get a satisfying wrap-up.

The movie opens with a montage of hardcore sex scenes, mostly played for laughs (or at least smiles), acclimating the audience to what's ahead, though actually, there isn't all that much explicit sex later on; primarily an orgy sequence which while explicit is not shot in pornographic detail, and a gay three-way which is more funny than sexy. The integration of sex works well here and, while it is occasionally mildly arousing, anyone, gay or straight, watching this film just to get off will be disappointed. The acting varies wildly from weak to solid, with the best coming from Sook-Yin Lee, the therapist, and Lindsay Beamish as Severin. Justin Bond gets the best line as he surveys the orgy crowd and says to Lee, "It's just like the 60's ... only with less hope." The movie looks great (had it been done in the 70's, it would have been grungy and dark, but this is colorful and crisp) and has some wonderful CGI work for short connecting sequences which swoop through New York City. I'd give Mitchell a B for what's on the screen but an A for effort and intent.