Shame

★★★★

(2012)

Michael Fassbender and director Steve McQueen’s second feature together is a difficult one to look at. Like his debut Hunger, Shame hangs about the screen, cold and stark, each frame meticulously composed and static and, where his main concern first time around was hunger striker Bobby Sands deprivation, this time around McQueen takes a long hard stare at a successful man’s addiction to sex.

Play write Abbi Morgan’s tremendous script (she also penned this months The Iron Lady) and Sean Bobbit’s orange and blue hued camera work follows Brandon (Fassbender) a successful Manhattanite, whose life is consumed, threatened and numbed by sex, masturbation and pornography. Prostitutes and ever intensifying images of sex have left him afraid and unable to have a true and caring relationship with nearly everyone but his laddish work mates. When his world is intruded by his younger sister, Sissy (Carey Mulligan) Brandon’s worry and (erm…) the shame of his addiction starts to near the surface.

Both Fassbender and Mulligan’s performances are spot on. Fassbenders face (and every other part of him) being in nearly every frame certainly holds up for the duration of the film and Mulligan’s big sweet presence is as clumsy, worrying and adorable as ever. Though Sissy’s not without her problems either McQueen doesn’t attempt to judge their parents or even their past and turns Shame and it’s intensity inwards offering little or no conclusion for Brandon. It is in fact nakedly and almost wholly a film about a drowning man.

Thankfully there are a few moments of hope to not let it be totally suffocating, especially in a beautifully acted dinner date scene in which Brandon tries to reach out for someone in a genuine way. It has to be said that although McQueen’s half-hearted glance towards any redemption for Brandon is faint at least it’s in there somewhere. Or is it?