Following his directorial breakout Hedwig and the Angry Inch in 2001, John Cameron Mitchell followed it up a half-a-decade later with 2006’s subversive sex dramedy Shortbus. Now celebrating its 15th anniversary following its Cannes debut, the film has undergone a 4K restoration and a new trailer has arrived ahead of a theatrical run beginning at IFC Center on January 26 via Oscilloscope Laboratories.
Starring Sook-Yin Lee, Paul Dawson, Lindsay Beamish, PJ Deboy, Raphael Barker, Peter Stickles, Jay Brannan, and Justin Vivian Bond, the film follows the lives of several emotionally challenged characters as they navigate the comic and tragic intersections between love and sex in and around a modern-day underground salon. A sex therapist who has never had an orgasm, a dominatrix who is unable to connect, a gay couple who are deciding whether to open up their relationship, and the people who weave in and out of their lives, all converge on a weekly gathering called Shortbus: a mad nexus of art, music, politics, and polysexual carnality.
Watch the trailer below.
Shortbus returns to theaters on January 26.