by MATTHEW HAYS

Sook-Yin Lee doesn’t want her father to see Shortbus. “No way,” says the actor and CBC Radio personality, laughing just a bit nervously. At first, it sounds like an odd thing to say. After all, the film, in which Lee has a starring role, is getting rave reviews, playing at film festivals around the world to standing ovations and near-universal critical accolades. Shortbus and Almodovar’s Volver became two of the most-talked-about movies at the two most important film festivals in the world: Cannes and the Toronto International Film Festival. And that’s no small feat, given that they were competing with hundreds of films hocked by keen publicity teams.

But when you see the sexually explicit Shortbus, you begin to understand why Lee might ask dad to stay away from the cinema. Filmmakers love to generate controversy (or rather publicity) at film festivals, but long before the final print ever arrived on the shores of Cannes, the story had already become legend. Three years ago, Mitchell placed an ad in papers, stating that he was making a new film and looking for his principle cast. The hitch? Mitchell made clear that those who wanted to be in the film would have to be willing to do the Act before the cameras. Prudes need not apply.

Lee did, sending an audition tape in which she discussed her own sexuality and her own feelings about being a nerdy kid growing up in Vancouver and feeling like an outsider. Mitchell was suitably intrigued, and Lee was in. The cast—including Raphael Barker, Paul Dawson and P.J. DeBoy—then began rehearsals, which involved sexual scenarios as well as more traditional dramatic ones.

This all sounds well and good, but Lee (who hosts pop culture radio show Definitely Not the Opera) was moonlighting, and her employers at mother corp CBC were none too thrilled when they caught wind of the porn-sounding nature of Lee’s latest pet project. There was stern disapproval, and Lee became concerned that she might actually get fired. “They never actually used the F word,” she says now. “But they were strongly advising me not to do this. There was a lot of fear around it.”

A-list support

Lee says she then followed the advice of friend Douglas Coupland. “He told me to get letters of support. John [Cameron Mitchell] and I sat down and thought long and hard about who might be willing to support me.” The letters were sent, and the list included in the campaign makes for a name dropper’s wet dream: Yoko Ono, Michael Stipe, Francis Ford Coppola, Julianne Moore, as well as Canadian filmmakers Atom Egoyan, David Cronenberg and Patricia Rozema, among others, all chimed in. The CBC backed down, and Lee now thanks them for “taking a leap of faith and supporting me in this.”

And here’s the payoff about Shortbus: yes, it’s as sexually explicit as you’ve heard—acts caught on film include orgies, gay threesomes, Dawson in auto-fellatio, masturbation (that’s Lee’s scene) and good, old-fashioned hetero, missionary-position sex—but the carnal acts are just part of the film. Mitchell interweaves the stories of an ensemble of New Yorkers, all of whom are clearly still reeling from the psychological trauma of 9/11, now searching for some kind of intimacy and happiness in their world. Mitchell actually manages what many filmmakers have attempted but have usually failed to do: he’s made a film where explicit sex is a big part of the appeal, but has managed to use it in such a way that pushes the film’s plot and character development forward. Yes, the sex in Shortbus makes the European cut of Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut look like a Doris Day-Rock Hudson romantic comedy. But the rub (and tug) is that Mitchell goes beyond the gimmick, and uses the sex to get at larger emotional truths. The sex is titillating, but it also feels organic, like it was meant to be there.

“The truth is, when I learned I got the role, I was as full of fear and anxiety as the CBC was,” Lee confesses. “I was like, ‘Yikes! I have to do what?’ There’s a lot of fear and repression around sex. But that’s what’s great about Shortbus. It flies in the face of a lot of our assumptions about sex and sexuality. I didn’t really realize what we were tapping into when we were making the film, but I think John knew all along.”

Lee plays a relationship therapist who is harbouring her own secret: she’s never had an orgasm. When a gay couple in distress (DeBoy and Dawson, who are a couple in real life) go to her for therapeutic sessions, they tell her about Shortbus, a sex salon where there are no inhibitions, no rules and anything goes. Lee is scared at first, but decides to tag along. And that’s where many of the adventures begin for Lee (who describes herself as bisexual in her off-screen life).

From songs to sex

Mitchell is the visionary queer director behind the 2001 cult musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch, the film adaptation of his own stage play in which he starred. And Shortbus is easily the best follow-up act anyone’s conjured up in a generation. Mitchell began as an actor, even appearing in the cheeseball made-for-TV sequel The Stepford Children in 1987, but gained notoriety as a stage actor in the ’90s. And don’t expect him to say this isn’t really a movie about sex at all. “This movie began as a formal decision: I wanted to use the language of sex in the film just like I used songs in Hedwig,” he explains. “Just like songs, the sex services the plot. Exposition and themes come through the sex. Most films, because they can’t show sex, have elaborate metaphors for sex, but in our case we can show it, sex can then become an elaborate metaphor for something else about our characters’ lives.”

Mitchell points to the auto-fellatio scene as an example. “Here’s a guy trying to suck his own dick. In voiceover, you hear him saying, ‘I want to be alone in my orgasm.’ It’s like he’s trying to be truly self-sufficient. It ends in tears. This is an example of sex being used as a metaphor to introduce a character and his emotional goal.”

Slapstick porn

Mitchell has his camera sweep over a gorgeous, computer-generated version of the Manhattan skyline, double-dipped in day-glo saturated colours. It perfectly sets the over-the-top tone for this emotionally wrenching, explicit romantic comedy, which sometimes veers into what might best be described as slapstick porn. The actors are certainly into it, and Lee and Mitchell describe long hours of preparation, taking great Method actors as their models. “We looked at a lot of Cassavetes,” notes Lee. “Gena Rowlands in A Woman Under the Influence, that performance is simply astonishing. She is so brave. We looked at Nashville, and a lot of Woody Allen, like Husbands and Wives and Annie Hall.”

Shortbus meant that Mitchell would be using largely unknown actors, something which—along with the explicit sex—meant his second film would be a hard sell. “The advantage of not using stars is that stars and their agents would have been terrified. Stars aren’t the same thing as actors, stars are people who like to control their image and they sell more than their talent. They sell their image, which usually has something to do with sex.”

Of all the responses to Shortbus, Mitchell seems most proud of its Cannes reception. “When Paul DeBoy hums the American national anthem into the asshole of another man, that got cheers from the audience. It’s been a long time since a French audience cheered for the American national anthem. That was really amazing.”

Shortbus will have its Montreal premiere as part of the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma. For screening and ticket info, see www.nouveaucinema.ca

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