Unnerving, brutal and relentless are hardly words most people would use to describe sex. All of them apply to Steve McQueen’s new film Shame, but then, despite what you may have heard, the film isn’t actually about sex; it’s about addiction.
Sex happens to be the protagonist’s self-medicator of choice, so the movie’s gotten a lot of attention (awards at the Venice film festival–and partly for star Michael Fassbender’s full-frontal nudity), but this is a dark look at a person flailing, desperately, under the grip of a wretched dependence. And though watching a handsome movie star like Fassbender, in all stages of undress having all kinds of sex should be titillating, it barely is. Ultimately, it delivers only a bit more thrill than watching Jared Leto shoot up in Requiem for a Dream. It might be interesting, but it certainly isn’t much fun.
Set in an utterly authentic, brilliantly shot, (by Sean Bobbit) wintry New York, Shame tells the story of Brandon (Fassbender) a businessman (of deliberately vague stripe) who lives a cold, mirthless life punctuated only by aggressive, desperate sex acts. The often wordless, arid script is by McQueen and Abi Morgan.
When Brandon’s not entertaining a prostitute in his bland, antiseptic apartment, he’s watching Internet porn; when he’s not picking up random women at bars or on the subway, he’s masturbating in the bathroom at his office. This isn’t the fun, freewheeling world of Californication’s Hank Moody. Brandon’s gravity makes Hank look like a 12-year-old boy giggling over his father’s Playboys.
Brandon doesn’t just “like women” or even “like sex”. He needs to get off, no matter how, when or with whom. Whether it’s appropriate or not. Whether it’s even fun or not. Just like alcoholics who’ll drink the vanilla extract if that’s the only thing left in the house, Brandon doesn’t discriminate. By the end of the movie, sex just seems like a necessary act that provides temporary relief to a keening wound. About as pleasurable as having a boil lanced.
Brandon’s life—such as it is—is utterly upset by the arrival of his sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) a vulnerable, fragile singer who paws at her brother’s frame as hungrily as she paws at his emotions. She’s a hurricane of need and theirs is one of the more complicated sibling relationships you’re likely to see. Both Mulligan and Fassbender—each with flawless American accents—deliver vivid, searing portrayals.
The film provides no pat explanations of their “issues,” or even much in the way of detail or family background, but the dynamics of the relationship are gripping and not a just little suspenseful. Just how dysfunctional this pairing will get (or perhaps was in the past) provides the movie with much of its tension. There’s not only co-dependency here, but a disturbing sliver of something incestuous, or at least wildly inappropriate. What there isn’t is much commonality or—shudder to think—simple, filial love. Everything about these two, even their affection for one another, feels desperate and fraught.
In fact, Shame is an utterly loveless movie, just like it’s only passingly a sexy one, despite all the urgent couplings. McQueen’s characters couldn’t seem more alone; Brandon is a solo act—part of the reason why he can’t abide his sister’s intrusion—and McQueen often shoots him utterly alone in the frame. Fassbender is a genuinely magnetic, commanding performer so he fills that frame effortlessly, but it’s often hard to watch.
McQueen trains his lens on his characters and doesn’t look away, ever. The shots are long, uncut, still, unrelenting. It’s not at all surprising to learn that McQueen (whose first feature, the lauded Hunger was about Bobby Sands) comes from a fine arts background; shots are beautifully composed, with a formal, undeniable aesthetic integrity. That said, McQueen’s a keen dramatist too; those long, still shots build up a palpable tension that shudders through the whole film. Though there are some fast paced and energetic sex scenes, Shame is anything but; the movie—quite intentionally so—is a dirge.
The unblinking eye of McQueen’s camera is deliberately upsetting—and because of the content, it deliberately upsets our natural reactions to watching a sex scene, too. Shame doesn’t feel like porn, it’s too artful, too filled with classical music for that, but it’s certainly not full of the moody, prettified lighting and sensual pop songs that accompany sex in more conventional movies. The scenes are brightly lit, the camera utterly static, the takes nearly interminable. Which, in the end, makes the audience feel utterly voyeuristic. As you find yourself naturally titillated by the very naked bodies doing very sexy things, the movie does ask you to look at yourself. If you’re at all turned on by the contours—and consequences–of Brandon’s desperate addiction, who in fact, should feel ashamed?
Ultimately, Shame is nothing if not thought-provoking, and it’s certainly well wrought. This is a vivid, unsparing, blunt portrait of a character on the edge. But is it anything more than that? It’s hard to say it’s really moving, sadly. For a movie that’s a deep character study, that somehow feels like a failure. Though we see Brandon in pain, it’s hard to say we feel it; it may be the coldness of Brandon’s life—and the astringent, controlled approach of McQueen’s camera–seeped a little too thoroughly into the film as a whole.
McQueen watches his characters unrelentingly, but does he really get under their skin? The film resolutely refuses to take the formulaic “addiction movie” route, which is admirable, but you may find yourself longing to see Brandon sit down in a therapist’s office or stand up in a church basement and say, “I’m Brandon and I’m a sex addict”–simply because you want to know more about him.
The character, though observed thoroughly, remains maddeningly opaque. Maybe that’s part of McQueen’s point: Brandon is his addiction and nothing more. But it takes too long for the film to force us to empathize with Brandon or even the emotionally raw Sissy. And when it does, the shift is abetted by a fairly lurid plot twist that frankly undermines much of the film’s prior restraint. In the end, the film is as emotionally affecting as the obituary of someone you spied once, last winter, for a few stops on the subway.
Shame is rated NC-17 and will be released by Fox Searchlight Film in the US on December 2nd.
