QUEER CLASSIC

Shortbus

Sook Yin-Lee, Paul Dawson, Lindsay Beamish

ur friends in America were recently treated to a restored re-release. Rewatching it for the first time since I was a student in 2006, I was delighted to see how vibrantly it’s held up — both as a raunchy piece of entertainment and as a still subversive poke in the eye of the erotica-shaming mainstream. I was also struck by how it captures a queer culture obliviously on the verge of losing its communal spaces. (There’s a prescient joke here about finding love on a phone app that predates Grindr by three years). Loosely, it follows a naive, orgasm-chasing sex therapist and a drifting gay couple into the mind and orifice-expanding realm of an underground New York sex-and-social club, but it unfolds into a joyous, inclusive celebration of everybody’s carnal highs.