Shortbus

NYC in its horny, confused millennium hangover… but still relevant.

Presented as a post-September 11 movie, this 2006 indie gem directed by John Cameron Mitchell is a perfect representation of a post-millennial hangover: that strange period when the optimism surrounding the new millennium collided with economic uncertainty, changing technology, and changing ideas around identity and sexuality.

It leaves us lost and trapped in a very surreal reality, where sexuality labels and queer communities weren’t something to wear as an accessory, but a community where people could come together to connect, find themselves, and talk about taboo topics around sex and personal connection.

Even in a city like New York, where you think you can find your place, in the end it is not so different from any small town, where loneliness and isolation can become more real than ever. And that’s probably the big theme of “Shortbus.”

The freedom to express and understand who you are. All of this happens at the underground Brooklynsalon Shortbus, a place where sex is allowed in any form and becomes communication, a language to express intimacy, or for those who do have sex but don’t have intimacy.

The Shortbus club can be described as a sort of utopian little social experiment, where it doesn’t matter who you are or what you carry with you. It is a place to be yourself, to observe and to be seen. But above all, it is a place to learn that sex is not just an act humans do, but a way of communicating.

Yes, the movie starts with nudity and sexual acts in many different forms, from “self-experiments” and performative sex that somehow feels emotionally genuine, to voyeurism.

But as the movie unfolds, we start connecting the dots, and each story hides a truth about our sexuality and what really lies behind our inability to orgasm, our hidden fantasies, or a couple’s inability to communicate.

Everything is kind of left on the surface, but that’s also its beauty. It’s not a difficult movie to follow, but one that asks you to look through the amazing dialogues and characters and see what lies underneath them.

Even New York, presented like a plasticine city, creates a contrast between the cityscape and the rigid emotional walls the inhabitants build around themselves. It’s so easy to see all the opportunities around you, but at the same time, everything can be shaped and idealised.

“Shortbus” is a bittersweet, playful guilty pleasure, where sadness makes you laugh out loud at times, and also reflects the absurd obsession with sexual pleasure and how performative it was back in the day to expose your sexual life as a mission to Mars.

Here it shows its destruction in a hopeless place that becomes almost optimistic.

We are all plugged in, but we have never been so divided. And maybe that’s why “Shortbus” still feels strangely relevant twenty years later.

I wish we could go back to a moment when categories weren’t there to put us into different clubs, but to create a sense of belonging, where our own struggles were the real connection.