John Cameron Mitchell: ‘There’s been a certain sex panic in the air’

The multi-hyphenate talks about the rerelease of his groundbreaking drama Shortbus and the changes in how we view sex in the past 15 years

It's a little more than 15 years since John Cameron Mitchell's Shortbus exploded - interpret that verb as lewdly as you like - into cinemas, and in a sense, it feels a whole lot longer. Which is not to say that Mitchell's brazenly queer, joyously sex-positive comedy, about a female sex therapist pursuing the orgasm she's never experienced at New York's raunchiest underground club, is outdated. Rewatched today, as it enjoys a rerelease in US cinemas, it veritably hums with erotic vigour and philosophical playfulness, a presciently liberated film with its eye on the future of sexual connection, in all its poly, nonbinary possibilities.

It's just that it's hard to imagine film-making this proudly and playfully carnal coming out of the American indie scene now: we're living through a remarkably chaste period of cinema, perhaps marked by post-MeToo caution and responsibility, as film-makers reconsider the boundary between exuberance and exploitation. With its copious unsimulated sex scenes, Shortbus certainly raised some eyebrows in 2006 - but it could well be a lightning rod today, throwing a wrench into debates over who is allowed to depict what on screen.