Sexed-up shows such as "Grey's Anatomy" and "Desperate Housewives" rule the Nielsen ratings. Justin Timberlake can riff on bringing "SexyBack" or Nelly Furtado can sing about being "Promis-cuous" and zoom to the top of the Billboard charts. And it's likely magazines and newspapers received a hike in readership when they started reporting about the scandalous behavior of U.S. Rep. Mark Foley.

But the movies have been, shall we say, undersexed. Years of the MPAA ratings board putting a kibosh on films that exhibited a hint of raw, honest sexuality have made many films, both mainstream and on-the-fringe, delete sex altogether. (This was recently brought into the light in the documentary "This Film Is Not Yet Rated.")

It's gotten to the point where a movie could have the studly duo of Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale locked in a torrid love triangle with Scarlett Johansson, whom Esquire recently dubbed the "Sexiest Woman Alive," and it still generates all the sexual tension of a tax seminar.

Amid this celluloid repression comes "Shortbus," a new independent film playing at art-house theaters across the nation, including the Triangle. An ensemble piece about lost-and-lonely New Yorkers who usually convene at an underground sex club, the unrated film goes all out in the sex department.

Director John Cameron Mitchell ("Hedwig and the Angry Inch") hired actors and actresses who wouldn't mind actually doing all sorts of dirty deeds on film. The opening moments are virtually a quick-cutting, introductory montage of the characters immersing themselves in the most compromising (and, for one lone character, the most amazingly limber) of positions. One already-notorious scene involves three naked men and a rather unorthodox rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner."

"Shortbus" is the latest art-house film to let it all hang out when it comes to graphic sexual content. In recent years, actual explicit acts have been displayed in such films as Vincent Gallo's "The Brown Bunny," Michael Winterbottom's "9 Songs," Carlos Reygadas' "Battle in Heaven" or practically anything by that French provocateur Catherine Breillat.

Lessons of 'Erotique'

Sean Keeley, director of publicity for indie-film distributor Tartan Films, which has delivered "Songs," "Heaven" and Breillat's "Anatomy of Hell" to nationwide screens, says it has been his company's intention to release carnal, controversial cinema in theaters.

"Tartan looks for films that are 'cultural hand grenades,' films you have to talk about," Keeley says. "Films that are not gonna disappear in the background long after they've left the theater. Films that challenge people to step outside their comfort zones. A lot of the films are stretching those boundaries."

"Shortbus," which is at least more upbeat than those aforementioned bummers, is now playing at the Chelsea in Chapel Hill and is slated for Galaxy Cinema in Cary at the end of the week. But don't look for it to play Raleigh or Durham anytime soon. The folks who run the Rialto and Colony art-house theaters have already been down this road.

Twelve years ago, when those guys also ran the Studio II Drafthouse Theater on Hillsborough Street in Raleigh, two Alcohol Law Enforcement agents halted and seized "Erotique," a sexually suggestive, NC-17-rated film that was playing. They cited a state law that prevents establishments that sell alcohol from showing sexual acts. The agents later returned the film in exchange for the owners agreeing not to sell beer or wine to anyone seeing it.

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