Shortbus [2006]

Average customer rating:

Brilliant film, great dvd

A 'Footloose' for the post-9/11 audience

I honesty liked this film!

Ummmmmmm, actually amazingly intriguing

...and i thought "Velvet Goldmine" was bad!!!

Shortbus [2006]
Starring: Yolanda Ross , Lindsay Beamish , Sook-Yin Lee , Paul Dawson , and PJ DeBoy
Director: John Cameron Mitchell
Manufacturer: Universal Pictures Video
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B000NT6HRI
Release Date: 2007-06-18

Amazon.co.uk Review

In his aim to make an honest film about sex, John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch) has taken a somewhat documentary approach to Shortbus, a film describing various New Yorkers' sexual pathos. Framed by shots roving a homemade diorama of the city, Shortbus is comprised of vignettes featuring actors who helped craft this story of people's disconnect in sexual endeavors. Jamie (PJ DeBoy) and James (Paul Dawson), a gay couple experiencing a lull in their relationship, visit Sophia (Sook-Yin Lee), a sex therapist whose inability to orgasm results in her clients inviting her to a sex club after which the film is titled. Sophia's husband, Rob (Raphael Barker), is also willing to experiment, so the two independently embark on adventures in self-pleasure. Dominatrix Severin (Lindsay Beamish) plays a crucial role in Sophia and Rob's lives, as her search for real humanity overlaps with their desire for passion.

As each character's plot complicates, the viewer sees a similar melancholy bulldozing its way into these seemingly disparate lives. The depression is repeatedly used in comedic scenes, such as when James is asked on a date while still hospitalised for his attempted suicide. Yo La Tengo's score, which includes Animal Collective among others, lends this film a graceful ambience. Unlike porn, Shortbus has a resonance that encourages the viewer to consider one's own sex life as an important aspect of happiness. --Trinie Dalton

Customer Reviews:

Brilliant film, great dvd.......2008-01-10

Film 5 stars for interest, originality, daring, honesty and technical execution.

DVD 4 stars for price, design, extras - deleted scenes and making of.

4.5 rounds up to 5!

A 'Footloose' for the post-9/11 audience.......2007-12-17

For anyone who was wondering what 'Hedwig and the Angry Inch'-meister John Cameron Mitchell had been up to since that film came out, well, he was making this little baby. Shortbus is billed as being shocking, sexually explicit and whatever else, but while it may be the most sexually explicit 'mainstream' movie I've ever seen (the opening sequence intercuts between a man pleasuring himself in a uniquely gymnastic way and a cute multi-racial couple having very noisy and athletic sex all over their apartment) it's not meant to be shocking at all.

It's actually a rather sweet story on that fine old theme of American movies: Sex is Good for You. Perhaps the classic expression of this theme during my adolescence was Kevin Bacon introducing the delights of dancing to his uptight small town schoolmates; we all knew that dancing was really a metaphor for gettin' it on. Mitchell is not inhibited by convention, and focuses his story on the tale of Sofia (Sook-Yin Lee), a sex therapist ('I prefer the term Couples Counsellor') who has a lot of sex with her husband but who has never had an orgasm. Mitchell said that he noticed that a lot of sexually explicit films were coming out of Europe recently in which the sex was pretty bleak and/or depressing (probably thinking of kind of interesting but basically dispiriting movies like 'Intimacy' and 'Nine Songs'); being an American, he wanted to tell a more cheerful story.

This film has more erect penises in it than I, as a straight man, have ever seen gathered together in one movie. But the film isn't ultimately about showing you lots of sex; the story is told through the sex, demanding total commitment from the fine cast. It's a warm, funny and touching story about the value of community. As the increasingly frustrated Sofia, Lee (a popular Canadian radio personality, apparently) is both adorable and gifted with sharp comic timing. Lindsay Beamish is splendid as a glum dominatrix, and the rest of the cast is very good. Special stars for Alan Mandell as a former mayor of New York bearing a startling resemblance to one famous bachelor who had that job, and Shanti Carlson who plays one half of the Beautiful Couple that represents everything Lee's character doesn't have; one of the emotional high points of the film is a look Carlson throws Lee across the room during a particularly heated orgy. There wasn't a dry eye in the living room.

Heartwarming, really. You just have to be prepared to watch a lot of men and women having sex with each other in pretty much every permutation imaginable. (Director Mitchell, a lifelong homosexual, played a 'sextra' during the orgy sequence and, as an 'act of solidarity', reportedly got intimate with a woman for the first time in his life.)

I honesty liked this film!.......2007-11-12

I had it in my mind that since i wasnt a big fan of 'Hedwig' i wasnt going to like this, well i was wrong.

Ok the whole sex thing that eveyone seems to want to see this for is really non-existent. The only real shocking parts are at the beginning and then the story kicks in. I was totally hooked on this film all the way through but felt that even though i enjoyed it the characters could have been a little better some of them didnt quite have much of a story. The whole layout of the film was great and i enjoyed the artyness.

I thought this was more of a girls film than for guys. But it depends on what you like i suppose. I'll certainly give it another watch.

Ummmmmmm, actually amazingly intriguing.......2007-10-24

Ok, sex is a messy business right, not just physically but emotionally too.
I'm not going to tell you the story because that would ruin the film but all I will say is that this film was amusing, repulsive, arousing, upsetting, enlightening and yet heartwarming which is one hell of a roller coaster ride of emotions all in the space of an hour and a half or so. I watched it with my wife and we were stunned to silence when it ended only to say after a minute; "Wow that was actually really good". Well worth the watch. It IS graphic, so not for the sexually squeamish nor homophobic - you have been warned! Watch it!

...and i thought "Velvet Goldmine" was bad!!!.......2007-10-03

Truly awful.
Honestly, don't bother, though intruige will probably get the better of you.
A goes-nowhere, does-nothing kinda movie that leaves you with a "Just wasted 90 minutes of my life" sort of feeling.
Really. Very poor indeed.
Pretentious twaddle disguised as an exploration of modern relationships & 'am i with the right person' thinking.
Go grab a box set of 'Friends' instead. Ok, so you won't see the graphic sex (which actually is in context so one-star for that at least) but you'd learn more about the 'rigours of modern living'
No, just bad bad bad.

Average customer rating:

Shortbus [2006] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Starring: Sook-Yin Lee , Paul Dawson (II) , Lindsay Beamish , PJ DeBoy , and Raphael Barker
Director: John Cameron Mitchell
Manufacturer: Velocity / Thinkfilm
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B000LAZDQA
Release Date: 2007-03-13

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