Shortbus

Director: John Cameron Mitchell
Year Released: 2006
Rating: 2.0

Sexual perversity in New York is in full-swing, but people aren't without their problems: for one, a couples counselor can't have an orgasm, a dominatrix can't have a real relationship and a gay couple aren't getting along that well. I think it works best when it's avoiding the puns and silliness and best when trying for real emotion - the scenes with the old man and the model as well as the closet scene are arguably the most memorable attempts at drama in the whole movie. Also, as I've said with regards to other films, it's a challenge for filmmakers trying to make serious art and serious porn at the same time - too much of the latter and it becomes pornography instead of art, too much of the former with traces of the latter turns it into a 'serious' picture afflicted with a need to be sensationalistic. John Waters, Mitchell's mentor-of-sorts, usurps the system by dodging sentimentality, embracing the camp and never moving past the infantile stage and challenging the audiences to find the 'value' (he also could care less about filming actual penetration) - here, once the characters have finished fucking, sucking, ejaculating inside of each other, on their own faces and/or in a room full of other naked people, their genitals (and fluids) have completely upstaged them and any of the movie's alternative motives.