The analogies between events in Phillip Noyce’s fine new thriller about South Africa’s anti-apartheid struggle, Catch a Fire, and aspects of the current American political scene will be obvious enough even to a moviegoer only modestly aware of public affairs.

“It doesn’t matter where I begin; no one is going to believe me, anyway.” So begins a voiceover by actor Joseph Cross, playing author Augusten Burroughs, whose popular memoir of a disastrously abnormal childhood and youth is the basis for this film adaptation.

Considering the prudish criticism the film has attracted from some quarters, Shortbus hardly appeals to the prurient, the perverse or the purveyors of porn. Nor is the unsimulated sex between its actors—lots of it—really the most distinctive feature of Shortbus, which was directed by John Cameron Mitchell, who also gave us Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Rather it is the warmth and the sympathy with which Cameron Mitchell tells his story about sex and intimacy, and the whole wide world of ways in which people pursue both. Also more notable than the sex is Mitchell’s distinctive visual style and use of animation, as unusual and delightful here as in Hedwig. The story revolves around several characters, including a sex therapist, Sophia (Sook-Yin Lee), who has never experienced climax despite a vigorous sex life with her husband Rob (Raphael Barker). She reveals her secret in session with a gay couple, Jamie (PJ DeBoy) and James (Paul Dawson), who are considering opening up their five-year monogamous relationship. They introduce her to Shortbus, a salon in Manhattan hosted by Justin Bond (playing himself), where gather a gallery of characters seeking sexual and cultural communion of extraordinary kinds. Sophia’s entry into the world of Shortbus brings her into contact with Ceth (Jay Brannon), who becomes the third in Jamie and James’ relationship, Severin (Lindsay Beamish), a dominatrix who plays therapist to Sophia, and finally Caleb (Peter Stickles), a voyeur who has been observing the relationship between Jamie and James for two years.