On Tuesday I went to my second outing at the LFF with Dawn and Toby to see the controversial new film by John Cameron Mitchell SHORTBUS. I wasn't overly impressed with his film HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH - it just seemed to try too damn hard.

SHORTBUS sees most of the cast damn hard too.

The film was the talk of Cannes due to the sex scenes - the most hardcore ever seen in a legit film. As Mitchell said to the audience before the film started "If you can get through the first 10 minutes you can get through anything" - and what a baptism by spunk. James (Paul Dawson) films himself first peeing in the bath then gingerly auto-fellating himself until he gives himself a money shot. Intercut with this is sex therapist Sofia (Sook-Yin Lee) and husband Rob (Raphael Barker) going at it like the Taliban are on Ditmus Boulevard while dominatrix Severine (Lindsay Beamish) giving Jesse (John Hardman - O Dear) a young yuppy lad a sound thrashing in a room overlooking Ground Zero until he squirts all over a Jackson Pollock hanging over the bed! James and his partner of 5 years Jamie (PJ DeBoy - should by BJ by the looks of things) have deceided they need a more open relationship but seek help from Sofia first. The session results in Sofia confessing she is wound up over never achieving an orgasm. The Jamies' invite her to visit Shortbus, a downtown private sex club/cabaret where anything and everything goes. When she arrives she meets the flamboyant Madame Justin Bond (luckily played by Justin Bond of Kiki & Herb fame) and the Jamies' meet model Ceth ("It's Seth with a C", Jay Brannan) who becomes their first threesome partner. Stumbling into the Lesbian room Sofia meets Severine and they start a tentative friendship. But where does Caleb (Peter Stickles) the Jamies' voyeuristic neighbour fit in? And with whom?

And that is the set-up. We follow them through ups and downs and ins and outs, through epiphanies and climaxes, through swooping around a nice animated Manhatten, through sex attempts and suicide bids until it all culminates - oh ok CLIMAXES - in the 2003 New York blackout with all our protagonists in one place. Ok let's get it out of the way... the sex scenes are jaw-droppingly graphic. However Mitchell is right in filming them as he has. Too often in films where sex is the main theme it's seen as empty and almost the last dance in the Last Chance Saloon - how many of the shaggers in LAST TANGO IN PARIS, INTIMACY, ROMANCE, BAIS-MOI, IRREVERSIBLE, CRASH, MA MERE actually seemed to enjoy what they were doing? Here the sex scenes are seen as ways of affirming a sense of being alive... indeed there is almost a post-9/11 feel to the film - the characters seem desperate to connect and feel loved and wanted.

The performers all - sorry - handle their parts well, you find yourself liking the characters and enjoy their company. I liked Sook-Yin Lee's screen presence a lot, PJ DeBoy gave Jamie a likeable gaucheness while Jay Brannan and Peter Stickles are good as the men who come into the Jamies' orbit. Sorry about that. Justin Bond steals every scene he is in, slightly larger-than-life but with razor-sharp timing, none more so when he wearily surveys a room full of humping bodies as sighs "It's just like the Sixties only with less hope". How good it is that this unique performer has been captured on screen.

But why did this film I enjoyed so much in the cinema start to fade after a while? Despite the empathy generated by the cast, the characters remain fairly one-dimensional and none are ultimately hurt by this La Ronde trip Downtown - apart from an astonishing scene where Alan Mandell appears as an ex-Mayor of New York seeking atonement at Shortbus for doing so little during the 1980s AIDS epidemic (that's spelt K-o-c-h), the film maintains a fairly light feel that makes you wish for some real emotional grit. For all it's envelope-shunting and provocative content it all boils down to we just need to love each other. As disappointing an ending as any Hollywood rom-com. Or even a Lassie movie.

But see it, it's a hell of a ride.