Starring Sook-Yin Lee and PJ DeBoy. Rated R.

Finally, a movie for everyone who thinks autofellatio means blowjobs in cars. Viewers will soon be disabused, so to speak, of that notion, along with any number of other psychosexual preconceptions, as they get to know these riders on the Shortbus.

The title refers to the little yellow bus set aside for “the gifted and different”, as explained by the dragged-out mistress of ceremonies for a cabaret of the same name. Here, Justin Bond is acting, flamboyantly, as a stand-in for director John Cameron Mitchell, who did his own dirty work in Hedwig and the Angry Inch, still the best musical ever to centre on a transsexual German rock star.

In Shortbus, the tuneful angst is spread out over a number of mildly conflicted characters, while most of the songs happen within the confines of the New York City cabaret of the title.

Longtime Vancouverite and former MuchMusic veejay Sook-Yin Lee gets her best acting gig yet, as Sofia, a sex therapist who has a few problems in the sack. This big-O deficiency sounds like pretty obvious stuff, but the way Mitchell handles it, you can see that Sofia has used her head too much, and not in the fun way. She’s married to Rob (Raphael Barker), who treats his bedroom duties like vigorous car-washing sessions.

Meanwhile, near ground zero—as made graphically evident by memorable use of an animated model showing where in the Big Apple we are (although the film was mostly shot in Toronto)—a dominatrix (Lindsay Beamish) gives a trust-fund boy the old what-for. And elsewhere, James and Jamie struggle (Paul Dawson and PJ DeBoy, respectively) to maintain a relationship made more fragile by the addition of a third party (Jay Brannan).

These disparately desperate characters eventually cross paths at Shortbus, where all is revealed by the wisdom of drag queens and people who like to fuck in public. I’m being a bit glib about the movie’s fluid formulations; I may be compensating for Mitchell’s determination to shock. If viewers can get past the fact that everything here is utterly explicit, there’s a lot of funny and sweet material, although the relationship stuff isn’t quite as convincing as the more cynical views of human nature, especially as delivered by the droll Bond, who comes across as Truman Capote as played by Elizabeth Perkins.

By the way, the movie also reveals the real way Jackson Pollock made those paintings.