‘It’s just porn!’ sneered the grudging projectionist. It probably accounted for the packed screening when this major Cannes talking point finally arrived here. John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch) is certainly a director of interest, though perhaps less for his challenging perspective on human relationships than for the sex. And Shortbus is long on sex. It starts with three scenes of people hard at it, and ends in an orgy. In between, a couples counsellor searches for her first orgasm, two gay men take on a third wheel and a dominatrix tries to connect. In a post 9/11, Bush-beaten world, it aint easy.

Thankfully, Mitchell offers more than gyrating bodies for, as any one who endured Nine Songs will know, cinema sex can get awfully dull. Using it as a metaphor for connection, he opens a frank exploration of mind, body and soul inside New York’s Shortbus night club – “a salon for the gifted and the challenged’ – where anything goes. It’s a retreat from the world, a place where one atones for sin, where voyeurism is participation. A melange of art, music, sexual politics and ‘polysexual carnality’.

Shortbus is a delightfully cheeky film that even manages to surprise; certainly the sexual informality can be toe-curling in mixed company (national anthems anyone?). It is also an hilarious joust at the self-centred and frequently selfish world of its patrons. ME! barely explains Mitchell’s playful motives as he dissects self-help in a cold, harsh light. “I love cute people!” shrieks one character during a deluded, therapeutic break-through. Closer to the truth is the mistress of Shortbus – “It’s just like the 60’s, but with less hope” he sighs.

// COLIN FRASER