This movie got a lot of attention because it's explicitly about sex and the sex in the film is not simulated, but there's more to the film than that. The director, John Cameron Mitchell, who also created and starred in Headwig and the Angry Inch, said in an interview (the location of which is totally lost to my memory), that the movie is supposed to be about sex, not about sex as a metaphor for something else, and if that's the point of the thing, then it would be really silly to try to simulate the sex that's in the film. The question that plagued the movie (and generated its buzz) was "Is the 'real' sex really necessary?" a question that presupposes that having 'real' (non-simulated) sex in a film is something to be avoided, by definition. I don't necessarily buy into that. I suspect that that presupposition has more to do with prudishness than anything else.
So once we let go of the knee-jerk need to not have 'real' sex in the film, the choice to not simulate it seems pretty self-explanatory. The many, many sex scenes in the movie would look damn silly (as well as being damn silly, as above) if they were constantly off-camera, covered by hands or legs, or constantly cut between faces, bodies, and backs in order to accommodate body doubles. I don't particularly want to see a man cum into his own mouth, or a three-way between three gay men, but to remove those visuals from the movie would betray the whole basis of the movie. Basically, it'd be pointless to make this film any other way.
But does it work as a movie? Well, yes and no. Many of the individual scenes work quite well, even in their context of the rest of the plot. They're funny, charming, often very sexy, and they give us an insight into these characters and their abilities to relate to their friends and lovers. And that "relating" is something that's always sexual, but not just sexual. Sex is not a metaphor in this film. It's treated as part-and-parcel to all kinds of relationships, married couples, life partners, friends, even intimate strangers.
However, the individual scenes don't add up very well, which is the fault of many a movie. In the end, literally the end of the film, there are a lot of threads left dangling and that lack of closure is basically covered by an overly-cheerful spectacle that makes it seem like everything has been resolved, when in fact, only two out of (by my count) five plot threads have been tied up, and the simplest ones at that. Sofia, notoriously played by the CBC's Sook Yin Lee (who is quite good!), is the real protagonist, a couple's councillor/sex therapist who's never had an orgasm. The climax of the film is her climaxing, and it's the result of a three-way that's somewhat foreshadowed, by pretty much a deux ex machina. There's no real explanation for why this sexual encounter is the one that puts her over the edge. She hasn't learned all that much through the course of the movie (except maybe that she actually likes women?). Nevertheless, she gets her orgasm, and it's a cinematically wonderful moment that you really have to see for yourself.
The other thread that's actually tied is the relationship between James and Jamie, a gay couple who open their relationship to a third, and might actually adopt him into the relationship. The only resolution, here, is that James learns to accept that Jamie loves him after an attempt at suicide, and letting another man penetrate him. In context, that's a lot less tacky than it sounds, but it's, again, not particularly well explained. James was a male prostitute, and bears more scars from that than he admits, and for the majority of the film can't let anyone "in," either literally or metaphorically, but why he can let someone "in" all of the sudden, and why that implicitly solves all their problems is another question.
But Severin, the professional dom who can't have an actual friendship, is left sitting in a chair with no resolution. Sook Yin's husband is still kind of a dick, and we really don't know if she's leaving him in favour of exploring her new sexuality, or if she's going to go back to him now that she's had her orgasm, or what. And the side-characters in Jamie and James' relationships, in the tradition of Renaissance comedies, seem to conveniently fall in love with each other. All of those threads are left dangling while a marching band sings "We all get ours in the end..." Well, not even the members of the cast have "gotten theirs," so how am I, a member of the audience, supposed to buy into this feel-good film?
Don't get me wrong. There's some really wonderful stuff in here. Some of the scenes in the sex club that provides the movie's title, "Short Bus," are wonderful. The finally-out, former mayor of New York is fascinating, and the club itself does seem to be a welcoming atmosphere of sexual exploration and expression. It seems to be open to gay, straight, queer, and kinky alike with no prejudice against anyone, and no assumption of sophistication on the part of those who aren't straight and/or monogamous. Despite all real-world logic, the club might even allow single, straight men in (!), and there doesn't seem to be a cover charge, which is just mind-boggling considering how much a closet in a basement next to a boiler-room costs in Manhattan. Yes, it's a ridiculous fantasy, but it's a positive fantasy. I, more than most, have no objection to that.
But the movie itself is incoherent in the most literal sense. It just doesn't stick together, which is sad, really, because a genuinely popular American movie that looks sex right in the face (or the ass, or the pussy, or the cock, or...) is something that that culture (and this one!) could really use. The general tenor of erotophobia in Anglo-American culture is unhealthy. It indirectly suborns homophobia, sexism, and a whole host of other social ills. I can only hope that this film is the Model-T of the genre, and that it will eventually lead to a Volvo or even just a Chevy. Hope schwings eternal.
Posted by orion at January 10, 2007 10:43 PM