Shame

SHAME

Written by Steve McQueen & Abi Morgan

Directed by Steve McQueen

Starring Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan

Review by Emily Freestone

Artist-turned filmmaker, Steve McQueen, demanded the attention of audiences and critics alike in 2008 with his feature debut, Hunger, which dramatised the final months of Irish Republican Army activist, Bobby Sands, when he protested his treatment in jail by leading a 66 day hunger strike culminating in his death. In McQueen's second feature, Shame, he brings to the screen the same intensity and stylistic restraint as a filmmaker and, once again, showcases the exceptional talent that is Michael Fassbender.

The story follows Brandon (Fassbender), the senior employee of an unspecified but successful company in New York who leads a seemingly simple and mundane existence carried out in his clinically executed daily routine. He lives alone in a modern high-rise apartment which is stylish but sterile. He lives in a desensitised state. We soon find out what he does to feel something. He is addicted to sex. The opening scenes depict Brandon undressing a girl with his eyes on the train, watching porn on his laptop over dinner and paying a prostitute for sex in his apartment. Something tells you this is just another average day.

This addictive cycle of sexual indulgence that so consumes his private life is disrupted when his sister, Sissy (Carey Mulligan) shows up unannounced in his apartment one night demanding a place to stay. We know that she has been leaving him messages which have gone intentionally unanswered. We know there is friction between the siblings. But it is what is unsaid and unexplained, such as the reason behind their obvious distain for one another, that proves the most intriguing aspect of the film as a whole.

As they trample on each other's feet living under the same roof (they seem to keep walking in on each other naked) the tension between them builds to boiling point. The best scene in the movie is shot in one take over 7 minutes and it is simply Fassbender and Mulligan, shot from behind, sitting on a couch with cartoons playing on the TV in the background. Every little niggle and argument they have had so far has led to this conversation. There is a danger and desperation in this particular showdown that we have not seen before. They are disgusted by each other's actions; they so desperately want nothing to do with each other, yet know they are bound for life. He feels trapped by her presence, she wants to re-connect.

Being addicts, they are dependent on their compulsion to drive them, but cannot seem to escape the cycle when they realise it has consumed them. Both use their fixations as a way of avoiding any real issues they have to face which does nothing but add to their problems. This is most revealing when Brandon ignores a legitimate cry for help from Sissy and chooses instead to go on a rampant bender of sex and violence with strangers in New York's seedy underbelly.

Brandon's subsequent remorse the morning after having realised what his stubbornness and addiction has led to, is a turning point. There are signs that he wants to change and a hopefulness to the final scenes. But addiction is an unpredictable beast that often comes back to rear its ugly head.

This film is a revealing and bold snapshot of addiction fearlessly played out by Fassbender and Mulligan who, arguably, both give the best performances of their careers. They bring a complexity and strength yet extreme rawness and vulnerability to their characters without judgement. McQueen's restraint – what is not said and what is not shown – is just as telling as some of the more explicit scenes. If, as they say, less is more, Shame definitely proves it.