Shame – review

Deeply buried: Shame

London-born director/screenwriter Steve McQueen has followed up his debut feature – 2008’s Bafta-nominated Hunger – with another hard-hitting movie experience in this sexually-charged study of obsession.

If it wasn’t for the stiff competition this year, McQueen’s stark and moving film, Shame, about two very troubled siblings in New York, surely would have done more damage in this year’s award season. However, Michael Fassbender – who also stars in Hunger – did earn a Golden Globe nomination for his role as Brandon, a sex-addict and commitment-phobe whose unorthodox lifestyle is unsettled when his frantic and fragile sister, Sissy (Carey Mulligan), turns up at his flat uninvited and in need of a place to stay.

Combine two of Hollywood’s up-and-coming stars, in Fassbender and Mulligan, with an absorbing script and some daring (and often nude) performances and you have a compelling hour and a half of cinema.

If New York is the “city that never sleeps”, then these two young people are as restless as their surroundings. Part-time club singer Sissy is a free spirit, who seems to have moved from city to city since the pair last met. Meanwhile, Brandon has developed an obsessive and incessant no-strings-attached sexual appetite.

Despite his surface-level appearance as a successful young bachelor – he is good-looking, has a top city job and seems to possess a weirdly seductive charm – deeper down resides a desperate and anxious man, who for some reason is struggling to connect with women in a way that allows him to forge relationships.

Brandon spends an unhealthy amount of time gratifying his sexual needs by ordering call-girls to his flat, masturbating with a kaleidoscopic range of porn material (both at home and at work) and picking up loose women in bars for one-night stands.

However, his compulsion is at least self-contained – that is until his sister arrives. This is when the feeling of shame rears its ugly head and becomes a burden on him; something which he also believes his attention-seeking and self-harming sister to be.

Sissy is needy and in Brandon’s fury he is only too eager to point this out. She is indeed a girl in need, but as Brandon is trying to deal with his own problems, he is not ready to face his responsibilities to her and the emotional baggage she brings.

After initially seeing the glitz of the Big Apple, we soon see the less glamorous side of Manhattan, as both Brandon and Sissy are being sucking into its sewer and Sissy’s cry for help needs to be answered if she is to survive. It should serve as a wake-up call for Brandon, but he is reluctant to face up to reality.

It is implied that there is an unseen back-story that has led to the character defects that are eating away at our two protagonists, but we are essentially left guessing as to what this might be and whether they can ever get their lives back on track, but it is clear that they need to help each other before it is too late.

Fassbender and Mulligan are wholly convincing in their visceral roles – the former delivers an intense performance that recalls Christian Bale at his best – and McQueen deserves to be spoken about as one of the best new British filmmakers, alongside the likes of Duncan Jones (Moon and Source Code).

Shame (18)
Directed by Steve McQueen
Starring: Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan, James Badge Dale
Running time: 101 minutes

Shame is showing at the Rio Cinema until 26 Jan and at the Hackney Picturehouse and Rich Mix until 2 February.