There's been a lot of hype around Steve McQueen's (the artist and filmmaker behind Hunger in 2008) gritty new venture, Shame, which has recently enjoyed its UK release and a healthy serving of critical acclaim.
After a viewing though, I can't help but feel the praise is unfounded and that this is a classic example of style over substance. It seems to me that people are baffled by the overt, and unnecessary, ambiguity so immediately jump on the 'profound' bandwagon; they declare that it must be important and meaningful and admitting otherwise would deem them simple and idiotic.
Naked Ambition
Shame is the account of Brandon Sullivan (Michael Fassbender), a vaguely charismatic thirty-something professional, and the stark impact of sex addiction on his relatively mundane life. Orbiting clumsily around this theme is the questionable story of his wayward sister, Sissy (Carey Mulligan with a dodgy accent), and her brief stay with him in New York.
As a fan of delicate, dialogue-heavy films such as Before Sunrise (Richard Linklater, 1995) and Before Sunset (2004) and explicit but intelligent films Shortbus (John Cameron Mitchell, 2006), 9 Songs (Michael Winterbottom, 2004), I was enthralled by McQueen's idea.
Turns out, it's a little thin. Many of the characters are soulless clichés and, without a definite plot, the topic alone is not enough to sustain a feature film. That said, in places, it is a stylistic masterpiece, with long, open shots, which view like yawns at the triviality of life, versus the rapid cutting of sex scenes mimicking the excitement of escapist carnality. In the lengthy exchanges of dialogue, the camerawork is neither experimental nor pacey but instead smooth and sophisticated, inviting an audience to feel as if they might be taking part in these intimate scenes.
Sex, Drugs and Plotting Holes
The sex is an unavoidable subject, and a sensitive one. There are relentless, but tastefully constructed sex scenes, all of which help show the invasive, obsessive and compulsive nature of Brandon's addiction and are necessary when exploring this topic. However, these scenes don't show an addiction getting progressively worse or steadily better or, in fact, anything that provides either a storyline or at least an interest. His addiction remains the same throughout and, after sixty minutes, it becomes a little monotonous. In a film about the destructive nature of sex addiction, it undermines itself with a standstill storyline.
Shame is, of course, intentionally ambiguous and slow. This should be expected. Usually, these traits sell a film to me but, in this one, the ambiguity serves as an excuse for the cavernous plot holes and non sequiturs, such as the curiously misplaced scene in which Brandon snorts a cocaine-like substance before an unsuccessful sexual encounter with a work colleague. He does this once and never again. The moment is irrelevant and rapidly forgotten.
One point, though, did stand out like a diamond in the rough, giving the film some sort of conventional climax. Building to a finale, in an explosive rush of sex, Fassbender, or a stand-in, is clearly seen penetrating an actress during a three-way session. Because there has been a dawning of commercially explicit films this decade, the scene alone is nothing particularly new, and neither does it benefit the plot or add stylistic value, but it is the scene's placement in the timeline that proves exceedingly clever.
Up until this point, nothing outrageously explicit has actually been shown and viewers have no reason to believe any of the sex is 'real' (either ambiguously à la Last Tango in Paris [Bernardo Bertolucci, 1972] or definitively as in Shortbus), yet the scene to follow this is one of deeply disturbing gore. Because of the 'real' sex shown previously, this juxtaposition tugs the audience subconsciously into reality, and out of the artifice of drama, making the bloody scene all the more uncomfortable and convincing, even fooling us into believing its reality, which is so hard to achieve in a modern, numbed moviegoer, accustomed to violence, sex and shock.
Switching from the real to the contrived so quickly proves, surprisingly, to be the biggest shock in Shame, as a viewer's mind cannot vacillate as quickly as an edit between the two.
Because film is a dimension that rarely steps into the 'actual', the accepted line between reality and theatre becomes troublingly blurred when it does. However, unfortunately for Shame, so does the line between profound and poor when the canvas of the movie is riddled with holes (pun intended).
The Grade
Yes, Fassbender is excellent in this demanding and brave role. He provides an exhausting emotional depth whilst retaining a hardened exterior essential to his tragic character. Mulligan too gives a powerful performance that helps establish the electricity between these two leads. What McQueen lacks in the addition of colour and story, the actors do make up for in performance.
There are moments of arguable genius, such as the striking opening sequence of seduction on the subway, without a single line of dialogue, which is a truly brilliant short film in itself, and a testament to cinema's unique ability to analyse the smallest of complexities - the twitch of an eyebrow, a spark in the eye... - and turn them into something worth exploring. Here, McQueen seems to be a master of subtlety. Sadly, this soon vanishes and the rest becomes posy, shallow and stagnant.
'Important and meaningful' it's not, and the idea hadn't matured enough before it became a film. But it's a comfortable C+ all the same.
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