Some of these Sodomitic Gothamites seek post-traumatic sexual healing in the aftermath of so much disjunction and death so close to home. Some are looking for the Big O, or the Little Death, a way to lose themselves -- their fears, their pain -- in a larger psycho-sexual release. And some are searching for someone or something to make themselves complete, the physical and emotional "other half" depicted in Mitchell's previous movie musical, "Hedwig And The Angry Inch":
But I could swear by your expression
That the pain down in your soul
Was the same as the one down in mine....So we wrapped our arms around each other,
Trying to shove ourselves back together.
"Shortbus" is full of wounded, fractured people trying to shove themselves back together. Just as the genitally stunted Hedwig personified sex as the Great Divide, the new Berlin Wall that was also a bridge ("Without me right in the middle, babe, you would be nothing at all"), the characters in "Shortbus" focus on sex as a way of getting through to each other, and getting in touch with themselves. It's a gleefully randy romantic roundelay, in the tradition of Max Ophuls' serially sexual French comedy "La Ronde" (1950). Polymorphously pornographic, sure; but it doesn't feel the slightest bit obscene. And that's a neat trick.
The camera soars over a colorful model of New York City, a dazzling imaginative creation suggesting both artistic sophistication and handmade naivete: The city as a brilliant child's ultimate Play-Doh project. We swoop into people's windows for a passing glimpse into their lives, before taking off once again to alight on someone else's sill. At the lower tip of Manhattan, we see a burnt red scar with two square gouges. We pull up and... we're overlooking the real Ground Zero from a window decorated with dildos. A downtown dominatrix, her masochistic client tied to the bed, grumpily goes through the workaday motions of her unfulfilling job, which climaxes in an artsy eruption of Abstract Expressionism.
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