BOLDLY reclaiming explicit screen sex from the arthouse crowd, Shortbus is undoubtedly a cinematic first. It’s a sweet-natured romantic comedy abundant with tumescent members and dollops of ejaculate. Not that this should deter the squeamish cinemagoer or excite the dirty-mac brigade. For the sex here, among a grab-bag of hipster New Yorkers, is initially an arresting strategy (cue nervous giggles in auditorium), then a character component and finally an inconsequential echo of the project’s greater ambitions.

The film was written and directed by John Cameron Mitchell, who created Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and revolves around two troubled couples, straight and gay, who regularly meet in the X-rated Brooklyn salon of the title. James (Paul Dawson) is a suicidal video-artist falling out of love with his actor-boyfriend Jamie (played by P. J. DeBoy), and Sofia (Sook-Yin Lee) is a therapist whose inability to orgasm is destroying her relationship with her husband, Rob (Raphael Barker). The couples are surrounded by a glamorous bestiary of so-called sexual outcasts, deviants and the plain old polymorphously perverse, all of whom come to Shortbus to exchange bon mots and bodily fluids daily.

In other words, here is contemporary America’s “wretched refuse” and “huddled masses” yearning to breathe free. It is no coincidence that it opens with the Statue of Liberty in close-up, or that it features a climactically comical rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner (sung in the midst of a threesome, no less). This movie, Mitchell says, is an attempt to revive sacred American ideals of freedom in the tyrannical face of Bush-era conservatism.

But it’s not all sex and politics. As James and Sofia drift through self-analysis and eventual self-discovery, the movie bristles with one- liners — “It’s just like the Sixties. But with less hope!” — and pulses with a soft melancholic heart to create a feeling that becomes infectious.

The soundtrack, gently fey, jangly indie pop from Scott Matthew, is an immeasurable help.

If there are quibbles, it’s that the Shortbus denizens can occasionally be painfully bohemian — “I’m gonna save up all my money and make art for a year!” says one — and that the movie’s ultimate depiction of sex is so upbeat, smiley and frothy as to be almost devoid of passion. Yet these are minor complaints. And when faced with the totality of more than 100 years of screen sex, Shortbus is not just a cute aberration but a triumph in its own right.

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