Snuck out of work early today and like a dirty old man, went and caught the 5:10 pm show of Shortbus (www.shortbusthemovie.com/). I tried to get C.E. (the guy I'm seeing) to go see it with me this weekend but he hates cinema. I then asked friend Bill, after noting on his blog that he wanted to see it, but he had to stay home and wash his hair. So, I decided fuck all y'all and marched right on down to the Embarcadero to check the damned thing out for myself.

First things first - sex. Yes, the actors in the movie participate in real life sex acts together, both of the hetero and homo variety. However, the sex is not in the slightest bit erotic. Call me jaded, but there was nothing particularly remarkable or obscene about any of the sex scenes. In this regard, Mitchell has quite impressively succeeded in accomplishing what he set out to do in making this film.

Basically, the film is about a group of New Yorkers who are unable to emotionally connect with one another in the wake of 9/11. That particular tragedy is only alluded to briefly in a couple places in the film. For example, at the beginning, as the camera pans across an animated, papier-mâché like Manhattan (my favorite part of the film, actually), it briefly focuses on the footprints of the twin towers before entering the window, and life, of a dominatrix who has her dildos lined up on the window sill, two of which are standing in for those ill fated buildings. Later, at the club the characters all hang out at the Shortbus of the title, the host, Justin Bond (Kiki of Kiki and Herb (www.kikiandherb.com/) fame) indicates that all the people at the club were deeply impacted by 9/11 because it was the first real thing to ever actually happen to them. Against this setting, we meet James and Jamie, two gay lovers who have decided to open their relationship to a third party, Ceth, unaware that their lives are being observed by a voyeuristic neighbor, Caleb; their couples counselor, Sofia, and her husband Rob; and Severin, a dominatrix who befriends Sofia and beats the crap out of Rob. Each character is desperate to connect with others, each is incapable of making that emotional leap of faith, each seeks it through polyamorous shagging at Shortbus.

I didn't love this movie, but I did like it. It was certainly a lot better than I had anticipated. I tried really hard to ferret out bits of pretense and self-importance and was unable to find much of any because this movie is essentially a fairy tale where none of the standard rules apply. These characters aren't unable to connect with one another because they're too self-absorbed to see beyond their own reflections - something I've become both wary of and increasingly bored by in our über hip, not quite post ironic world. On the contrary, all they do IS see one another. However, sex, short of being an act of intimacy to bring people together, becomes more like a wall to keep people apart. For example, James and Jaimie open up their relationship to Ceth in a desire on Jamie's part to increase intimacy between them, and on James's part to keep them further apart. For Jamie, Ceth is a bridge, for James, he's a wall. So great is the trauma from their collective loss, they're terrified of either opening up or letting go, lest they be forced to lose even more of themselves.

The film isn't entirely unlike Mitchell's prior film, Hedwig and the Angry Inch (www.get-hed.com/) (one of my favorite films, by the way). Both deal with sex, both deal with loss and desire for wholeness, and the ending to Shortbus, in both scope and tone, is practically a reenactment of the end of Hedwig. Surprisingly, I couldn't help thinking while watching Shortbus, that this movie would probably translate really well as an opera.

Those of you in major metropolitan areas will have no problem finding this film playing at your local art house cinema. Those in more rural parts, tough luck, you'll have to wait for it to hit Netflix. Either way, I highly recommend this one. Even if I do think polyamory is retarded and essentially a one way ticket to genital wart town.