Review: Shame

Shame: where to start with this one? Let’s start with the obvious: Michael Fassbender in the title role of a sexaholic is simply astonishing. He delivers one of the greatest performances I’ve ever seen: he is completely taken over by the character. Whatever awards he does win – and given the strong nature of the film’s content, he may struggle for wins – he will absolutely deserve. The film hinges entirely upon Fassbender’s intensity – I can’t think of another actor who could carry this role.

The film is unsettling and bleak in its observation of Brandon, a well-off New Yorker who works, eats, sleeps and sates his considerable sexual appetite with shocking regularity. That appetite is never sated with the same woman twice, and as Brandon descends into his own sexual hell, it becomes clear anything goes.

The film’s numerous sex scenes are in no way erotic – and rightly so as we are effectively watching a man drink himself to death through sex. The look on his face at his climax in the tragic threesome trumps Cronenberg’s entire portfolio and is the very definition of sex as self-loathing.

Unfortunately, to discuss Brandon any further is to reveal key plot points. Needless to say, my friend Rod and I discussed the film for a full hour after the lights came back on.

The film is marked out not only by Fassbender’s astonishing performance, but also excellent camera work from Sean Bobbit (who worked with director/co-writer Steve McQueen on Hunger), notably that long single takes are favoured throughout. One of the most uncomfortable scenes of the entire film is the slow performance of New York, New York by Brandon’s lounge bar singer sister Sissy (played perfectly by Carey Mulligan): virtually nothing happens, and yet everything happens.

Brandon’s and Sissy’s behaviour and character traits carry heavy hints of childhood abuse (among other horrors), but almost frustratingly the film never reveals the source of their broken lives.

The film is bookended by scenes on the subway as Brandon stares intently at a young woman, focusing on his prey. At the start, his confidence and unrelenting lasciviousness are startling, but at the close, his confusion hints of either a journey to redemption or a swift descent back into hell – neither he nor we know how he will react.

I’m not sure McQueen succeeds in creating his stated desire: a film that makes us talk about sex addiction because it’s the elephant in the room. I don’t see Brandon as an Everyman – his traits are not mankind’s writ large. Nor does the film debate the sexualisation of civilisation as it is openly focussed on sex addiction only – although clearly there is a causal link between the former and the latter.

Whatever, Shame is a raw, vital work that demands to be seen.
Score: 8/10