SHORTBUS

Director: Written and Directed by John Cameron Mitchell

2006, 101, Not Rated

Cast: Sook-Yin Lee, Paul Dawson, Lindsay Beamish, PJ Deboy, Raphael Barker, Peter Stickles, Jay Brannan, Justin Vivian Bond, Alan Mandell, Adam Hardman, Ray Rivas, Bitch, Shanti Carson, and Jan Hilmer.

 

OUTFILM CT’s Queer Thursday selection brings you a little heat to warm up early Spring… Shocking when it was first released, Shortbus still remains galaxies of propriety away from Maechen in Uniform or even John Cameron Mitchell’s own Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Sofia Lin (Sook-Yin Lee) is a couples counsellor in 2000s New York City, with an issue of her own –she has never been able to reach an orgasm. Looking a new, freer way to experience sex, she accompanies two of her patients, former child star James and former sex worker Jamie to Shortbus, a weekly underground erotic salon. By connecting with the trans owner of Shortbus Justin Bond, a dominatrix named Severin, and joining in a (very) un-simulated orgy, Sofia Lin’s patients are beginning to liberate themselves. But Sofia’s intense frustration about her non-orgasmic life has the power to darken all the lights in the city.

“Unrepentantly graphic… like the ungodly ribald lovechild of John Waters and Mike Leigh.” Sarah Michelle Fetters, Moviefreak.com