Shortbus.

"As utopian visions go, it doesn’t get much better than Shortbus, a film in which all you need is love - and sex, lots and lots of mutually, sometimes collectively, pleasurable sex," sings Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "An ode to the joy and sweet release of sex, the film manages to be a sincere, modest political venture that finds humor where you might least expect it, notably in a ménage à trois featuring a cheeky rendition of 'The Star Spangled Banner.'"

"The sex is the most unremarkable thing about it," notes Stephanie Zacharek in Salon. "What surprised me most about this gentle-spirited sprawl of a movie, set in post-9/11 New York City, is what I can only call the friendly, Midwestern quality of the filmmaking. It's as if [John Cameron] Mitchell - the thoughtful, mischievous faun behind Hedwig and the Angry Inch, one of the only truly swinging rock musicals ever made - were calling out to one and all, 'Come on over, kids - we're having a sex party!' This may be a movie made by a New Yorker (albeit a Texas-born one), yet it's anything but insular. Gregarious, neurotic, maybe a little guilty of oversharing: Shortbus is American right to its nonexistent short shorts."

Updated through 10/6.

Michael Koresky opens Reverse Shot's round at indieWIRE: "Mitchell's cinematic instincts - so musical, so grandiose, so spectacularly queer yet attempting to be hetero-friendly - are so dead-on (Shortbus contains the most humane, compassionate use of the close-up of any American film this year) that it will be easy for many to overlook Shortbus's slightly faulty wiring and precarious plot pivots." Also: the iW interview.

Jürgen Fauth: "Shortbus has the potential to become one of the films that redefine audience expectations, a watershed that divides other movies with similar themes into before and after. It's that good."

Jim Ridley: "It's a triple-X midnight movie with a heart of squarest gold." Also in the Voice, Tricia Romano: "The after-party for the New York premiere last Tuesday at Angel Orensanz was like a continuation of the film's lush, anything-can-happen multi-sexual vibe."

The film "knows exactly how anomalous it is and where it fits into the current zeitgeist," writes Dennis Harvey in the San Francisco Bay Guardian. "(The most quotable line occurs when one character surveys an orgiastic scene: 'It's like the 60s but with less hope.') Mitchell is defiant enough to create hope, even his own zeitgeist if need be."

At Movie City News, Stephen Holt calls it "a magnificent, joyous queer romp and a milestone achievement, a real breakthrough film."

Earlier: "Cannes. Shortbus." and A summertime question for Eugene Hernandez."

Just saw that John Cameron Mitchell is guest-editing Time Out New York's annual sex issue, opening it up with a first-person making-of: "[T]his ain't no one-night stand of a movie. If you're gay, it's gonna make you straight. If you're straight, it's gonna make you gay. If you're in the middle, it'll push you to the edge. If you're on the ledge, it'll pull you back in through the window."

Update, 10/5: In the New York Press, Armond White hails "a bright, impudent new chapter in New York bohemian cinema. A comical S&M scene in front of a penthouse view of Ground Zero says more about the Big Apple mood than the 9/11 Commission Report. Yet Shortbus avoids the usual hometown gloating by Hollywood-financed mascots Woody Allen and Spike Lee or even Andy Warhol's self-distancing party games. It succeeds because writer-director Mitchell's freaky-deaky social observations balance what's funny and what's cutting."

Updates, 10/6: Aaron Dobbs: "Although it has its flaws - most notably a final sequence that seems to undermine everything that has come before it in the film - Shortbus is no sophomore slump. Rather, it proves that Mitchell is one of the most creative, daring and innovative filmmakers on the scene today, indie or otherwise."

"If only the film seemed more up to the high-minded, well-meaning goodwill it inevitably attracts," writes Mark Olsen in the Los Angeles Times.

Dan Parsons talks with Mitchell; also in IFC News, Michelle Orange offers "A Brief History of Real Sex on Screen (Well, Without the Porn).

Posted by dwhudson at October 4, 2006 12:52 PM