Shortbus (2006)
Directed by John Cameron Mitchell
Cast: Sook-Yin Lee, Paul Dawson, Lindsay Beamish, PJ DeBoy, Raphael Barker, Jay Brannan, Justin Bond

Shortbus tells the story of an eponymous weekly sexual underground salon in New York City that is part philosophy café and part orgy. It is a feast of music, conversation, artistic exchange and erotic satisfaction (with lots of drugs and alcohol). The sheer abundance of sex could initially be startling but hardly daunting to all you regular porn watchers. The film is hilarious, including a scene of a man giving himself a blow job (autofellatio) and one in which a guy sings the American national anthem into the naked butt of another.

There is lots and lots (and lots) of sex, not the kind that makes your nose bleeds but the kind that makes you want to read Walt Whitman.

Shortbus refers to the American yellow school bus. Regular kids take the long bus while the "special," troubled ones ride in the shorter one because there are less of them. Thus making Shortbus a refuge for misfits, and it relates to all of us with the perpetual search for pleasure and intimacy, both emotionally and physically.

If you've ever been called queer, fag, dyke, geek or just weird, you would feel right at home. Every single eccentricity and orientation is celebrated. An overweight trannie walks around in inch-thick glasses, a wrinkly old man kisses a teenage male model, and a sex therapist who has never had an orgasm is determined to get one in here.

"Shortbus (and ideally New York) provides a safe place for a brilliant, if difficult, collection of people whose real homes can be quite judgmental of them," Paul Dawson, who played one of the main characters in the ensemble, put it this way.

The polyphonic storyline centers on the relationship between the gay couple James (Paul Dawson) and Jamie (PJ DeBoy). The pair became real lovers during the making of the film.

James, a clinically depressed male escort, spends a year to make an autobiographical film for Jamie as a suicide note. Dawson said even as James is abandoning his own life, he is compelled to document his existence.

"It's a desperate effort on his part to identify the beauty in it which he knows is there but is unable to see or feel. I have certainly identified this impulse in myself and in many gay artists and writers. I believe this is a struggle common in people who are oppressed and have been led to believe that who they are is wrong or bad or inferior. That's why I wanted to portray it."

In one of the most touching scenes, a dominatrix and artist named Severin takes a polaroid of James and writes a price tag on his image, upon which he breaks into tears.

"When he sees the price etched in the Polaroid, he is reminded of how little he thinks of himself," said Dawson. Sex work became a part of Shortbus because it was so common. "John [John Cameron Mitchell of Hedwig and the Angry Inch fame, the director] would always say, 'It's become the new temp job.'"

Justin Bond, the fabulous androgynous proprietor who represents the Shortbus club, expresses a charming nonchalance when he puts it into perspective. He looks at the room full of love-making nudes and says: "It's like the sixties. Only with less hope."

It is sexual liberation in different contexts. In the 1960s, the hippie movement in America was partly a reaction to the Vietnam War. Shortbus is the answer to the Iraq War. Then again, it could simply be a critique of sexuality that coincided with a war.

"It's interesting to me that we started making Shortbus in the Spring of 2003, at the same time America was going to war in Iraq," said Dawson. "That timing alone might make the film an act of protest. I can't speak about the 60s. But nowadays just to recognise the underdogs in our society, those people who are disenfranchised of equal rights, is considered political."

Oh no, Iraq, let's not go there. Let's just make out.

Shortbus is an official selection of the Canne Film Festival and the Toronto Film Festival 2006. It is opening in Hong Kong on Friday Feb 2 at the Hong Kong Arts Centre.

Hong Kong Arts Centre Agnes b. CINEMA!
Schedule: 8pm/ Feb 2 - 4, 8 - 10; 4pm/ Feb 3; 9pm/ Feb 5 - 6, Feb 13
Tickets: HK$50 (except 02/02 fundraising Opening Gala, HKD$90)
Details: www.hkac.org.hk