In one of the most often quoted lines from Steve McQueen’s film “Shame,” Sissy, played by Carey Mulligan, explains to her brother Brandon (Michael Fassbender) that they aren’t bad people, they just “come from a bad place.” Little is revealed of where or what that might be, and audiences and critics have speculated over what exactly she means. Whatever it is, it’s led to a very unhealthy existence for Master Brandon and Miss Sissy. Brandon spends his waking hours sleepwalking through his white collar professional life, a sex addict searching for his next orgasm, while the manic depressive Sissy opens her arms to the world, desperately hoping for love in return.
“Shame” opens on Brandon’s solitary life, but when Sissy comes to pay him a visit, old wounds are reopened between the two. Her presence cracks his normally calm demeanor to reveal an explosive temper beneath.
The plot only scratches the surface of the relationship between the two siblings, and is interested in exploring how Brandon’s sex addiction keeps him from forming any real emotional bonds with anyone, including Sissy, whom he feels some responsibility for. But McQueen’s script gives Brandon and Sissy mostly superficial dialogue. They serve as two archetypes: he shuns emotion, while she explodes with it. One of the better scenes in the film involves Brandon going on a date with a co-worker, and attempting to follow it up by sleeping with her. But he can’t go through with it, preferring an anonymous hooker instead.
I reckon it was McQueen’s goal to make the sex act as joyless as possible in this film, and he has succeeded. Far from titillating, the sex scenes in “Shame” are filmed in long shots and in close-ups of Brandon’s anguished face. Within the first 30 minutes, I think I got it, thank you very much.
Every addiction movie must have the obligatory “descent into hell” scene, and in “Shame,” Brandon’s comes as he first gets beaten up by the boyfriend of a potential pickup. He then trundles across the street to a gay club that perpetuates heterosexual stereotypes of said venues with its dim red lights and random hookups in every nook and cranny of the joint. Finally, Brandon spends what must be a good hour or so with two ladies at once in a cheap hotel room. The look on his face as he does the deed again and again is meant to convey his inner loathing, but I began to wonder if he wasn’t just feeling sore down there from all that rumpy-pumpy.
I will say that both Fassbender and Mulligan are captivating in their roles, and McQueen films people looking at one another well--Fassbender’s visual flirtation with a redhead on the subway is fascinating. And in a scene that might be a little bit of showboating on McQueen’s part, Mulligan sings “New York, New York” onstage as a minor-key torch song, the camera framing her cherubic face, nearly bursting with tears. That, I admit, I couldn’t turn away from. But I felt like this film, despite its brave performances, didn’t break new ground.
SHAME on BLU-RAY
A shame for fans of this movie is the curious lack of bonus features on the Blu-ray disc. I added up less than 20 minutes of content total, most of them talking head EPK-style edited pieces with clips of the film. They’re the kind of thing you might find on television, or as a free feature on iTunes to promote the film.
