New Arrivals
Shame Director: Steve McQueen (2011) Call Number: DVD-V LD12-0415
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Image: Courtesy of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
Brandon is a New Yorker who is compulsively addicted to sex, and is incapable of experiencing intimacy with women. When his opposite, needy younger sister Sissy moves into his apartment, Brandon’s life spirals out of control. “McQueen finds the exquisite tension between the brother wanting to disconnect and the sister longing for connection” (Rickey, 2011). As Sissy says at one point, “We're not bad people. We just come from a bad place.” However, McQueen leaves motivations and back stories up to the viewer's imagination.
Although the film has been given the most restrictive ratings in the US and in NZ (R18) due to explicit sex scenes, this slow drama is thoroughly unsexy. “What movies so often relegate to the margins of pornography or sophomoric titillation is radically redefined here, stripped of its erotic charge and depicted as a numbing erasure of life and emotion” (Hornaday, 2011). Shame is difficult to ‘enjoy’, but it would be impossible not to appreciate the acting, the cinematography and the direction. Fassbender’s performance is so riveting that you won't be able to take your eyes off him in long, uninterrupted takes.
References:
Hornaday, Ann. “A sex addict's suicide mission”. Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com. 2 Dec. 2011.
Rickey, Carrie. “Shame": Tale of siblings sexually haunted”. Philadelphia Inquirer. http://www.philly.com. 8 Dec. 2011.
Image: Courtesy of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
Vulcan Demirkan-Martin
Audiovisual Library