Beyond the Multiplex: Cannes

Gore and John Cameron Mitchell may not have much in common besides their nationality and (perhaps) their party affiliation, but both were received here as representatives of "l'autre Amérique," the republic of freedom, tolerance and progress that so inspired earlier generations of Europeans. Mitchell's "Shortbus" has already acquired a degree of notoriety, thanks to the fact that his actors engage in many varieties of genuine on-screen sex, but its net effect is almost the opposite of pornography. 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.

At a press luncheon in a beach pavilion the day after the film's premiere, Mitchell explained that he didn't fetishize "unsimulated" sex, and wasn't trying to echo recent real-sex films by Catherine Breillat, Carlos Reygadas and other directors. Rather, it was mostly a question of pushing his actors to a new level of emotional realism. "All sex has elements of simulation, of performance, of projection," he said. "If you're in bed with someone, you can't even be sure they're thinking about you. So it's not as if these actors aren't acting when they're having sex. When you see an actor crying, are they really crying? Anytime we're in bed with someone, there's always an element of what's going on in our heads, of using sense memory, in fact, of acting.

"There have been several films in the last 10 years that had real sex in them, but I'm definitely not imitating those. I find many of those films very harsh, very dark, very grim. We wanted to" -- here an upward, sunrise gesture with his hands -- "we wanted to say that a lot of sex is pretty funny, pretty fun, pretty silly. Most of the sex in the film is desperate, but it's a ridiculous kind of desperate. Sex has elements of humor in it, it has intellectual elements, it has emotional elements. We're getting at all of those, or at least I hope we are."

Although no specific dates are offered and the characters hardly venture outdoors, "Shortbus" is set in New York between the 9/11 attacks and the blackout of summer 2003, and its central characters -- one straight couple, one gay couple and a number of unattached people -- are seeking sexual healing for what seems like generalized malaise and depression. Some of them find it, at least temporarily, in an orgiastic house party called Shortbus (i.e., the bus for "special" and "challenged" kids) run by New York drag queen Justin Bond, a real person who appears as himself.

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.) Mitchell's "Shortbus" still has no U.S. distributor, and it remains to be seen how American audiences will respond to a film that begins with a good-looking man performing an improbable and impressively athletic act upon himself, and later on features a version of the national anthem sung, quite literally, up someone's ass. I could offer criticisms of the movie and will in due course. But it's a work of liberation, generosity and courage that deserves to be widely seen.

As for Kelly's "Southland Tales," which was one of the principal reasons I wanted to fly across the Atlantic and come watch a bunch of movies in the south of France, the battle royal has begun. In the five years since his precocious near masterpiece, "Donnie Darko," was released -- only to crash and burn before reemerging, phoenixlike, as a late-night cult favorite -- Kelly has been struggling to bring this half-parody, half-paranoid epic of the near future to the screen. I was rooting for it and I wanted it to work. I can even make excuses for this profoundly incoherent film, up to a point. But I don't think that Kelly's struggle is even half over.

Next page: Sarah Michelle Gellar, porn-star gang leader?