Mitchell, director and star of the cult favourite Hedwig and the Angry Inch, was at the Cannes Film Festival yesterday to premiere Shortbus, a sexually explicit portrait of New York City artists and bohemians on a comic and cosmic quest for connections.

While Hedwig used a glam-rock soundtrack as a musical language to propel the story, Shortbus uses sex as a form of dramatic communication, Mitchell said.

"I also wanted to tweak a little bit this absolute conservatism that's going on right now, this puritan resurgence that for me is connected to fear of anything strange," Mitchell said.

The film follows the sexual and interpersonal travails of a handful of characters who are among the regulars at a free-spirited, free-loving Manhattan salon where people gather to exchange ideas, opinions and body fluids.

The characters include Sofia (Sook-Yin Lee), a sex therapist who has trouble telling her husband (Raphael Barker) she's never had an orgasm; James (Paul Dawson), a former street hustler trying to gently brace his boyfriend, Jamie (PJ DeBoy), for life without him and Severin (Lindsay Beamish), a dominatrix who has never had a meaningful relationship.

The movie opens with the key players engaging in actual sex. Scenes of intercourse, oral sex and orgies are interspersed throughout, including a sequence involving a threesome of men singing The Star-Spangled Banner during sex -- while a fourth man watches in amazement from a neighbouring window.

For all the sexual candour, the film has a childlike sweetness to the characters and their relationships. They undergo moments of absurd comedy and sobering calamity, so in the end, the drama of their lives overshadows the sex scenes.

"Most people, by the end of the film, say the sex is the last thing they remember," said Mitchell, who spent years developing Shortbus, as he had Hedwig.

Mitchell held lengthy auditions to assemble a cast that could bond well romantically and sexually on-screen. Through workshops, improvisations, nights out bowling and games of spin the bottle, cast and crew built up their comfort level and developed the characters and story, with Mitchell writing the actual screenplay.

The actors said any trepidation they had about having sex on camera quickly vanished. Dawson and DeBoy, who have been friends with Mitchell for years, said they knew the director would handle it all with heart, humour and class.

Actors said friends and relatives generally know about the movie and support their participation, though they had to hedge a bit about the details with some family members.

"My dad, he knows I'm in a movie, but I don't really want him to go, because I wouldn't feel comfortable having my dad watching me have a big 'O,' " said Lee, who also appeared in Hedwig. "I'm sure he'd be rooting me on, though."

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