REVIEW: SHAME
Velvet soft silk sheets swirled like gorgeous waves of hair surround an apathetic figure looking longingly into the distance. The blue hue of the sheets, Michael Fassbender’s slightly amorphous pale body, and the bright light blend into one smooth washed out piece of cinematic minimalism.
It is this restraint that made director Steve McQueen’s debut prison drama Hunger such captivating viewing, and with Shame he has crafted an arresting and arousing film that lingers longer in the memory most of the sexual encounters that dominate so much of the re-release publicity.
The film’s censor bating topic centres on the spiral of a sex addict called Brandon, played by the utterly believable Michael Fassbender. He is a city worker who is less interested in career progression and more interested in workplace copulation. Brandon does everything he can to escape the bounds of his office and his bosses irritating attempts at charming the opposite sex. He finds solace in his brief encounters with prostitutes, random women on trains or in buses, and every man’s best friend…the palm of his hand!
His hollow existence is pierced by his sassy sibling, Sissy (apt name), who while enjoying some of the same promiscuity as Brandon is rather more interested in forming an emotional connection. In one particularly affecting scene she sings New York, New York at a local bar which elicits the first drop of tearful emotion from her elder brother. Sissy makes him re-evaluate his flawed lifestyle and he actually tries to form a non-sexual relationship with a female colleague at work.
But it’s the sibling rivalry that provides the film’s most perplexing sexual relationship. Sissy is reintroduced to her brother and the audience with no clothes on and this oddest of couples hold each other’s gaze with incestuous glee. In one scene, having been caught masturbating, Brandon aggressively jumps on top of his sister and rides her naked. This rather disturbing undertone is almost the natural extension of Brandon’s sexual conquests.
During a self-reflective period Brandon realises the pitfalls of his compulsion and actually goes cold turkey. In a darkly comic scene he empties draws of sex toys and top shelf magazines, along with a porn filled laptop into black plastic bags in a vain attempt to ‘get clean’. Unfortunately, like a smack addict over-dosing his fall back into habits of old is catastrophic.
It is this descent that provides the film’s most controversial scenes of sexual gratification. In one particular scene Fassbender’s character pays for sex with two prostitutes, before seeking oral pleasure from a rather an aggressive man in a gay club, and rounds off the night by stimulating somebodies partner in a bar. But despite this litany of ejaculatory activity the film is nowhere near as explicit as Lars Von Trier’s Anti-Christ, as little is seen and a lot is implied. In fact the film’s producer Brian Canning has candidly said that the film’s subject matter and kiss of death NC-17 rating in the US has foregone a cinema run over the pond. Anyway, their loss is our gain as anyone who sees this film will enjoy its soulful direction and multi-layered acting performances. No one should be ashamed of seeing this sex-ceptional drama as it is one of year’s true cinematic triumphs.
