Review of Shame (2011) by Nick M — 05 Aug 2012

I have never seen anything near similarity to Shame. There are powerhouse performances from both Carey Mulligan and Michael Fassbender, there are intensely graphic sex scenes, and hard to take in drama.

The director, Steve McQueen has worked with Fassbender before in Hunger which was also phenominal work. I give most of the credit to Michael Fassbender in this movie. He gives this insanely dramatic amazing performance that just electrifies the whole movie with this dramatic subject.

Michael Fassbender plays Brandon who lives in a nice apartment and has a well payed job in New York. He's also a sex addict, they don't ever bring up the term "addict" but you can clearly see he has a problem with sex throughout the film.

He has sex with multiple women that he doesn't know most of the time, has stashes of porno magazines, and has chats with girls that have sex on a live cam. Carey Mulligan plays Brandon's sister, Cissy.

Cissy has problems of her own, (depression) and comes to stay at Brandon's for as long as she can. Now, this screws up all of Brandon's plans, no more hot sex in the bedrooms and absolutely no privacy.

It's definitely a drama, and there's no doubt about it. The last 20-45 minutes of the film are heartbreaking and if I were you I would bring a tissue box just in case. Various scenes in the movie show full frontal nudity, and full on sex, of course.

But the nudity, honestly, brings something more to the film, it brings even more drama. I don't understand why people find nudity in a film so bad, it's the human form, female & male. We see at least one or the other on ourselves everyday.

Now i'm not saying go out and buy a bunch of movies with nude scenes in them, but i'm just simply pointing out that people make such a big deal of how "there is this scene where she's fully naked and you see everything".

Maybe it's just me, but either way, it bugs me. And you do see full on frontal nudity in this, but not just female, you see Michael Fassbender nude in many scenes. And that's why I find Steve McQueen's latest film so damn good, or at least that's part of the reason.

He takes chances that most directors don't like to take, he put out a movie about a sex addict that's filled with 6 or 7 real and raw sex scenes, no panning away, just sex in it's own manner, gay and straight.

I'm stating all this because this particular film made me realize those types of arguments people get into, which is good. So to wrap it up, I give Shame 100% and has been raised to the top of my list, for it's daring style and the great performances put on by Michael Fassbender & Carey Mulligan.