A Man Consumed

British filmmaker Steve McQueen opens his buzzy Shame with a stark shot of Brandon, the sex addict played by breakout of the year Michael Fassbender, laying in bed, his piercing blues staring up blankly at the ceiling of his New York apartment, a light blue sheet barely covering his body.

A moment later, the film starts earning the NC-17 rating the Motion Picture Association of America bestowed upon it, as Brandon begins his morning rituals, walking around the place almost aimlessly, in the glorious buff, the actor’s Fassbender literally getting so close to the camera you could almost....

Nah, I won’t say. This is a family blog, after all.

(But trust, I am thinking it – I haven’t been calling the actor my obsession of the year for nothing.)

As played by Golden Globe nominee Fassbender, Brandon is a cool cat. He’s not Jacob Palmer-cool, but he does live in the city and he has a job that pays him rather handsomely. And the guy is quite gorgeous: he’s thirtysomething, he’s tall and in shape, and he has this rascally smile to him...a charm that’s disarming

When he looks at a strange woman in a subway car it’s like he’s undressing her with her eyes.

More like he’s eye-f---ing her, actually.

She sees his desire and reflects it back. It makes her desire him.

It’s impressive to see, and even more so to see Fassbender pull that off so unblinkingly. That scene in particular lets us into his psyche so effectively because it communicates sheer volumes about who he is. Shame is a character study that, like many films this year, says more without dialogue, but it does so in a way that may leave the audience feeling like shameful voyeurs since we never actually crack Brandon.

The man has a one-track mind: his every thought is about sex. How, when, where he’ll get it. It’s all he wants and all he really needs. He’s a loner, completely detached from his family and from himself.

We barely know where he came from (New Jersey – and I know we all like to rag on the Garden State, but I hardly think being from there qualifies as reason enough for deviant behavior), but we know that the thought of having his lounge-singer sister Sissy (a heartbreaking Carey Mulligan) come crash at his place makes him wince more compulsively than the way he spanks the monkey while looking at online porn.

It’s Sissy’s arrival that makes Brandon feel the film’s titular emotion. Her mere presence, not to mention her obvious issues and neediness, make him feel out of control.

She unsettles him deeply with her own wants, to connect with her brother, and when he reluctantly catches one of her performances (of like, the saddest “New York, New York” you ever heard), she shakes him to his core and moves him to tears that surprise and anger him.

Shame isn’t the easiest film to wrap your head around, and I think that’s McQueen was going for with it. And not just because it deals with the taboo subject of sex addiction, which is does frankly.

It’s a bit puzzling that I found the film to be...problematic since it sounds simple enough – man has issues, man confronts issues, man has breakthrough? – so I can only explain it by the fact that the thing he kept Brandon, and Sissy, as such arm’s length that I, at least, couldn’t help but feel a bit...dirty for having peeked into their lives in such an intimate way.

Fassbender, though, should be well celebrated for his turn in this one. Not because he was brave to bare his body on the big screen (a body he should take great pride in, btw), but because he delivered a performance that was full of (haunted) soul. Or as much soul as this aspect of his character’s life we were allowed to get to know.

My Rating ***

Photo: Fox Searchlight Pictures.