.
fassbender shame

Shame

Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan

Directed by Steve McQueen
Rolling Stone: star rating
5 3
Community: star rating
5 3 0
December 1, 2011

Michael Fassbender delivers a bold and brilliantly immersive performance as a sex addict in Shame. He is so raw and riveting you won't be able to take your eyes off him. The thing is, you may want to. Shame, as written and directed by the British  conceptual artist Steve McQueen – who teamed triumphantly with Fassbender in 2008's Irish drama Hunger – is thoroughly drained of eroticism. Despite the NC-rating and copious nude scenes, the movie chills you to the bone. As it should. Fassbender's character, Brandon, is a slave to his addiction. He'll have sex with anyone, anywhere. The computer in his Manhattan office has gone viral with porn. When Brandon can't find someone to screw, he hires a hooker, tries a gay bar, or just jerks off – mechanically, no heat.  Brandon keeps his apartment sterile. The warmth of human connection is absent from it. That is until he gets a visit from Sissy (Carey Mulligan), his younger sister, a club singer in from Los Angeles. Sissy is needy, insistent. When she asks to stay with him, Brandon is horrified. Whatever their family history (incest? abuse?) neither Brandon nor Sissy can deal with it. Mulligan is in every way sensational. McQueen's camera holds her in relentless closeup as she sings "New York, New York" with an aching  slowness that defies the snappy essence of the tune but speaks volumes about the pain she's endured. In a coup de cinema, Mulligan makes that one number into a movie all its own. Shame is too blistering and brutal to cozy up to. But Fassbender and Mulligan are dynamite. And McQueen is a born provocateur. There's no easy way to shake off Shame. It gets in your head.

Related
The Travers Take: Reviews and Interviews From Peter Travers



prev
Movie Review Main Next

ADD A COMMENT

Community Guidelines »
loading comments

loading comments...

COMMENTS

Sort by:
    Read More

    Movie Reviews

    More Reviews »
    Daily Newsletter

    Get the latest RS news in your inbox.

    Sign up to receive the Rolling Stone newsletter and special offers from RS and its
    marketing partners.

    X

    We may use your e-mail address to send you the newsletter and offers that may interest you, on behalf of Rolling Stone and its partners. For more information please read our Privacy Policy.

    Song Stories

    “Too Close”

    Next | 1998

    Next was formed in Minneapolis when the uncle of Terry "T-Low" and Raphael "Tweety" Brown, who was a gospel choir director, introduced the brothers to Robert Lavelle "R.L." Huggar. Sounds of Blackness singer Ann Nesby groomed the R&B group before handing them over to Naughty by Nature's KayGee, who wrote and produced "Too Close." The idea for the song was sparked "from a conversation we had with several girls at a nightclub," explained T-Low. "It's talking about the club scene, with guys getting out of hand and the female telling him to back up, asking, 'What are you doing?'" 

    More Song Stories entries »