While films have long been willing to explore the realms of addiction (particularly when it comes to alchohol and drugs), few have dared to tread the ground covered by Steve McQueen’s Shame – the plight of the sex addict. I suspect that’s because those of us who’ve never been addicted to anything have a hard time rationalizing how sex addiction is a terrible thing. We see firsthand how drugs and booze destroy lives – both of the addict and those around him – but overindulging in sex? We can’t fathom how that behavior is particularly dangerous.

McQueen’s film, his sophomore effort after the beautifully harrowing Hunger, is only partially successful at exposing these dangers. Instead, Shame is sort of a mishmash character piece where the individual components tend to add up to more than the sum of the parts.

Michael Fassbender plays Brandon, a suave New Yorker who lives alone and fills the voids in his life with meaningless sex. Old wounds reopen with the arrival of his sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) – a manic-depressive lounge singer who threatens to bring Brandon’s coldly calculated world crashing down around him thanks solely to her presence.

Shame is a film where a plot description is essentially meaningless. Fans of narrative-driven films will likely find McQueen’s latest off-putting. Shame isn’t really interested in following the tenets of Hollywood storytelling, where every film is broken down into high concept and character arc. Instead, McQueen – who was an artist before a filmmaker – strives to create a mood. It’s not a pleasant one, particularly for a film that’s so sexually focused. There’s no titillation to be found in Shame – despite Fassbender’s repeated full frontal scenes and threesomes and masturbatory sessions -- this film is about as unerotic as a film about sex can get.

Instead, Shame seems content to explore the depths of the addiction Brandon deals with. The film falters in this regard because it never achieves any real level of profundity. The New York Brandon moves through is drab and grey and stripped of any sort of vibrancy because it’s just a symbolic representation of the character’s inner turmoil. Sex, perhaps the most vibrant and exciting of human endeavors, has been rendered equally boring and meaningless.

It’s unfortunate that Shame never gets deeper than these sort of glib observations because there’s a wealth of things to explore. McQueen is a gifted filmmaker, but one gets the feeling that he was at least slightly out of his element here. Like Hunger, Shame is a very controlled film – perhaps too controlled. Brandon may struggle to control his inner demons, but even when they finally break free and threaten to overwhelm him at the film’s climax, the scenes are shot in such an ambiguous and overly clinical way that we never really feel that the character is spiralling toward rock bottom.

Despite that, some scenes do work. Brandon tosses his pornography stash in a fit of disgust and begins what appears to be a genuine relationship with a coworker. Their dinner date is a pitch perfect recreation of the awkwardness and excitement of every first date, and its in moments like these that Shame feels like it has a heart and soul beneath its icy and detached exterior. When Brandon later tries to consummate the new relationship – and fails miserably – it’s again obvious what McQueen is trying to say, but the way it’s said still resonates.

The film’s highly controlled style stands in stark contrast with the subject matter – which is an aesthetic decision that was surely by design. Shame is about dichotomies, control versus abandon, lust versus love, and commitment versus the fear of being tied down are just a few of the themes explored. They’re certainly things worthy of exploration – which occasionally makes it frustrating that McQueen, like Brandon, seems so afraid to get up close and personal with them. These ideas are kept at a distance – as if McQueen wants his audience to see them and make their own interpretations of what it all means. In the right circumstances, this can be a satisfying approach to crafting narrative. Here, though, it’s hard to shake the feeling that McQueen has left too much ambiguity.

Take, for instance, the strained relationship between Sissy and Brandon. The film makes it clear at numerous intervals that these two tortured siblings grew up in unhappy circumstances – and that something has happened between them that has ruined their relationship – but the script never gives us a clue as to what that thing might be. It seems like an important detail, particularly as the film marches towards its blatantly foreshadowed conclusion, but there’s never any kind of revelation. I suppose, in some ways, that’s art imitating life – but it feels lazy in this context.

That Shame overcomes all these niggling little issues is a testament to Fassbender’s performance. The actor stands poised to become a huge star – a thespian who can carry weighty dramas like Hunger and Shame, but one who is just as comfortable in a popcorn flick like this summer’s X-Men: First Class. The relationship between McQueen and Fassbender feels reminiscent of a similar one between Scorsese and De Niro, and one can only hope that the two artists continue to grow together – on a similar trajectory.

Much will be written about Fassbender’s full frontal nudity, because it’s so rare to see a penis in American cinema, let alone see one multiple times. There’s a certain amount of bravery whenever any actor (or actress) exposes themselves for a role, but it’s arguably the least noteworthy thing about Fassbender’s work here. The actor seems to inhabit Brandon, this lustful creature who wiles away his free time by engaging in one meaningless orgasm after another. We believe he’s a sex addict and feel his suffering – but aside from that one scene where he trashes his pornography collection in anger and disgust, and his failure to consummate a “real” relationship, I’m not sure we ever feel the shame of the title. This isn’t because Fassbender doesn’t try – it’s more s a shortcoming of the script.

All of that being said, I think Shame is still a film worth seeing. The title will undoubtedly earn award consideration because it’s a beautifully shot movie featuring some fine performances. That being said, I don’t think the script and story are good enough to truly make it a standout from the rest of this year’s contenders – even though this year has been something of a “down” year for domestic cinema. Yes, Shame has problems – but those problems aren’t enough to warn audiences away from it. This is a film worth seeing – just don’t expect to be uplifted when the credits roll.

Recommended: Yes

Viewing Method: Press Screening
Film Completeness: Looked complete to me.