Shortbus - 2006

I watched Shortbus not because I'm a perve, or have a filthy mind, or even to surprise my girlfriend with what, from the opening sequence feels as though it is going to be a porno. Instead I am fascinated by cinema's inability to make films in which the central subject matter is sex itself. On numerous occasions cinema has managed to achieve genuinely erotic, intimate, passionate, lustful or downright sexy sex scenes - the irony being that all of these scenes are simulated sex. With Shortbus and a number of other films of recent years including Intimacy and 9 songs, the boundaries between simulated and real sex, and cinema and pornography have merged. Similar to violence in cinema which over the past ten years has become so graphic to the point of feeling pornographic it certainly feels as though the restrictions facing modern filmmakers are becoming ever more relaxed. Yet where cinematic violence can on occasion achieve an artistic and brilliant level of both relevance and enjoyment (if enjoyment is the correct word), sex is cinema, as it becomes more graphic becomes less dramatic and actually stands to make these films tedious, pointless and utterly devoid of pleasure - so very much unlike sex. It may be that while their is a level of complicity which exists in violence on screen, and you can either indulge that primal side of your nature, exorcising those parts of your mind which can in no other way, beyond actual violence, be purged, with sex it fails to work.
This, to my mind, seems to be that sex is an extremely initmate affair, and even when it involves more than 2 people their is a connection which exists between those partaking in sex which can never be replicated with a cinema audience. Sex, and the initmacy which is intrinsic to its act is almost internal, and so something is lost when you watch it. Unlike say porn which is clearly just for the audience to get off, sex in cinema attempts to recreate that intimacy, or passion, or even lust, which we all secretly know doesn't exist in porn and thankfully the pornstars seem completely aware of it. Its a mechanical act devoid of emotion. And so Shortbus, the most explicitly sexual mainstream film fails resoundingly on its one big selling point.

The film also fails on its more traditional and conventional cinematic levels as well such as story and character. The array of characters on display are barely likeable, the story is disengaging and by the end you couldn't care less if the main character has never had an orgasm (although you do feel compelled to point out that she might be going about it all wrong). The gay couple do nothing to elicit sympathy and nobody else manages to achieve anything close to empathy or sympathy throughout the entire film. Which is a shame because I had hoped Shortbus would be the first film to deal with the issue of sex in cinema and actually make it engaging, emotional and entertaining.