A tribute to Manhattan individuality as much as an affirmation of American-style life and personal freedom, "Shortbus" is a movie you want to hold close. It will most certainly pull you to its chest and deposit a loud kiss faster than you can define the term "orgasm." From the opening sequence, which involves a man fellating himself (yes it can be done, albeit with some yoga practice and a flexible torso), to a climax scene where a woman masturbates on a beachfront bench gazing at the stars in a New York night sky, "Shortbus" crams so much sex into its 101 minutes that it becomes, in the end, decidedly unsexy. Like combining a leopard-print miniskirt and a fur halter top with snakeskin mules, there's a helluva lot of animal here, an awful lot of exposed skin, and not all of it is pretty. Before long you'll want to see some plant life, some veggies to go with the mound of quivering flesh you've been served up. But as one great line (and you will hear many in this film) goes, "The kids here have oral sex with each other all night long, and in the morning they tell you they're strict vegans and don't eat meat."

The desexing of sex, however, is not a problem since "Shortbus" is about genuine intimacy and sincere familiarity. Never has movie-sex looked so guileless, so . . . nonthreatening. Director John Cameron Mitchell (of "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" fame) assembled an intriguing cast of artists and virtually unknown actors (as opposed to, say, professional porn actors) and worked with them over a 2-year period. Mitchell gets personal, but at the same time the themes he expounds are universal, albeit very middle-class, urban-American. The incessant relationship/sex obsession and the trail of psycho-babble left in its wake at times border on hysteria. But such moments are neutralized with spurts of lower-East Side cynicism mostly voiced from the expertly painted lips of Manhattan sex-club owner Justin (Justin Bond, playing himself) saying things such as, "Before, I thought I'd change the world; now I'm happy if I can leave the room with some dignity."

"Shortbus" refers to the special school buses in the United States used to transport "gifted and challenged" children (the regular, long buses carry "normal" kids). The characters featured here all seem to have rejected the regular bus seats long ago and settled in N.Y., since, after all, it's a place where, as as one character says "people come to be forgiven for their sins."