Steve McQueen’s Shame is perhaps mistitled: It’s the story of a man who has sex more often than he probably wants it, though still not as often as he needs it, which is a pretty fine distinction to make. And the word “shame” by itself is too loaded, too inherently judgmental. The idea isn’t that this character — his name is Brandon and he’s played, superbly, by Michael Fassbender — is doing anything he ought to be ashamed of. It’s simply that the shame he feels is nearly unbearable. Shame could have gone all wrong with the wrong actor. Luckily, McQueen has the right one in Fassbender, and that makes all the difference.
Shame is formal to the point of austerity: It opens with a nearly still overhead shot that’s inherently painterly, a tableau of a male nude — that would be Fassbender — semi-obscured by drifts of artfully rumpled blue sheets. McQueen, of course, is a fine artist himself — that’s how he made his name before he became well-known as a filmmaker, with the 2008 Hunger, also starring Fassbender. And there are ways in which Shame is too deliberate, too naked in its specificity. That may account for why some of its detractors consider it moralistic — again, the movie’s title isn’t helping it any. I did groan when Brandon is shown having desperate, uncomfortable outdoor sex, and later when, in what is supposedly the ultimate debasement, he allows a man to perform fellatio on him in the dim back room of a gay bar. (Immediately after that, he has to re-establish his…
Ali Larter Alice Dodd Alicia Keys Alicia Witt Amanda Bynes Amanda Detmer Amanda Marcum Amanda Peet Amanda Righetti Amanda Swisten
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