Cannes. Shortbus.

The AP's David Germain talks with John Cameron Mitchell about his famously explicit Shortbus, screening Out of Competition. In the Hollywood Reporter, though, you'll find Gregg Goldstein's longer, more substantive chat with JCM: "I wanted to create something through improvisation with the actors and explore sex as a cinematic language in a way that I hadn't seen, where it wasn't trying to be erotic or horrifying or negative or dreary."

"But can one really achieve dramatic enlightenment by watching characters engage in a single activity for an entire movie? Will we really understand their lives as a consequence?" asks the Hollywood Reporter's Kirk Honeycutt. His answer: "the film lacks the depth and discipline of Mitchell's first film venture, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, which makes Shortbus a real disappointment."

Updated through 5/26.

But indieWIRE's Eugene Hernandez calls it "artistic and ultimately hopeful," adding that "early positive reaction has buoyed interest in the movie here in Cannes, with insiders saying that even some unlikely prospects started circling the movie. A few buyers informally polled by indieWIRE today said they loved the movie."

Updates, 5/22: In the New York Times, AO Scott meets JCM and mentions in passing that the film is "ultimately less shocking than disarming, more a comedy of manners layered with social satire than a peep show or a John Waters-style provocation."

Cinematical's James Rocchi: "After years of buzz, actually seeing Shortbus leaves you wanting to invent new adjectives - Fucktastic! Cocktacular! Breastalicious! - but it also leaves you more than a little impressed by how funny and loose and, yes, emotionally engaging the film is. All the sex makes Shortbus kinda hot, but what's surprising is how Mitchell's sensibility and comedic charm makes it warm, too."

Update, 5/23: "It's a sad, sweet, openhearted work, a New York tragicomedy of manners that resembles what Woody Allen might make if he were 35 years younger and interested in the pansexual orgy scene," writes Salon's Andrew O'Hehir. And of course, if Woody'd been born a generation or two later, he very well might have been. Anyway: "Mitchell says the fictional Shortbus is based on real New York sex salons he has encountered, but declines to say whether the fictional ex-New York mayor who appears in the film, cruising for younger men, is based on a real-life model. (New Yorkers may have their own ideas.)"

Update, 5/24: "Think of it as Me and You and Everyone We Know for urban swingers," suggests Lee Marshall in Screen Daily.

Update, 5/26: "[A]ffectionate and generous rather than shocking," writes Sheila Johnston in the Independent. "For anyone deterred by the high-camp posturing of John Cameron Mitchell's previous film, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, it will come as a most enjoyable surprise."

Posted by dwhudson at May 21, 2006 8:08 AM