Base behaviour
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Shame (18, 100 mins)
Drama. Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan, James Badge Dale,
Nicole Beharie. Director: Steve McQueen.
Addiction is a dirty word, the stuff of garish tabloid
headlines, yet we are all susceptible to compulsive behaviour.
Hankerings for caffeine, sugar or tobacco stem from the same
dark places as drug and alcohol dependency.
We all have our emotional crutches and our escape routes from
the harsh realities of modern life.
Breaking any habit is tough - already, countless New Year's
resolutions will have been shattered to smithereens - but the first
step is recognising that physical and psychological need.
Michael Fassbender delivers a fearless, emotionally raw
performance as a sex addict wrestling with his myriad demons in
artist-turned-director Steve McQueen's follow-up to the critically
feted Hunger.
Littered with graphic scenes of sex and full frontal male nudity
that fully justify the 18 certificate, Shame is neither erotic nor
arousing.
Quite the opposite.
McQueen's piercing study of human behaviour is clinical and
non-judgmental, laying barely the flawed characters as they stumble
towards the brink of self-destruction without any indication that
the film-maker or his co-writer Abi Morgan will pull them back from
the abyss.
Cinema through McQueen's lens is never cute or fluffy but then
neither is real life.
Brandon (Fassbender) is a handsome thirty-something office
worker who is never short of bedfellows, including one of the
secretaries (Nicole Beharie).
Anonymous pick-ups temporarily sate his cravings for physical
pleasure but at night, he hungrily scours adult sites on the
internet.
He even indulges his fantasies on his work PC and one morning
his boss David (James Badger Dale) calls him into his office to
warn, "Your hard drive's filthy."
Brandon's routine of soulless couplings and seedy hook-ups is
thrown into disarray by the arrival of his needy, younger sibling,
Sissy (Carey Mulligan), who is carving out a career as a
singer.
"We're not bad people. We just come from a dark place," she
tells Brandon tenderly as the siblings stumble towards their grim
destiny.
Shame pulls no punches in its depiction of Brandon's base
desires.
The camera doesn't spare blushes and the ensemble cast place
their trust entirely in McQueen as he exposes the hollowness and
despair beneath each instance of supposed pleasure.
Fassbender rises to the challenge magnificently - no pun
intended - portraying his office drone as an empty husk, miserably
alone in a city that never sleeps.
Such is the ferocity of his portrayal, he should be a major
contender for an Oscar but his character plumbs some very murky
depths that make for uncomfortable viewing.
Mulligan is equally mesmerising, nabbing the film's best moment
when Sissy sings in a bar and the camera lingers on her face as she
sings a heartbreaking rendition of New York, New York.
Her fragile voice almost breaks and we can't tear our eyes from
the screen.
::Swearing :: Sex :: Violence :: Rating: 9/10
To find local screenings for Shame, click here
Wednesday, January 11 2012
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