Shame

Shame (2011) is about a man in New York with a sexual addiction. Brandon appears to live an orderly life: a good job, a clean flat, a schedule he shows nobody. Through the day and through the night he is looking for the same thing. He cannot form a relationship with anyone; in an actual attempt at intimacy his body does not work. Then his sister Sissy arrives unannounced and stays in the flat. She is chaotic, needy and constantly seeking contact, which is exactly what he cannot bear. There is something in their past and the film never explains it; one sentence passes. Steve McQueen made this as his second film; the first was Hunger, and Michael Fassbender is in both. McQueen shoots long and without cutting. A dinner scene plays in a single take; the section where Sissy sings in a nightclub runs unbroken and the camera does not leave her face. There is also a night run: Brandon running through New York while the camera tracks alongside him for several blocks, in one shot. It received the highest classification in America and McQueen refused to cut it. The film makes the addiction neither exciting nor attractive; the scenes are deliberately cold and joyless. It runs 101 minutes. Good for: character cinema, McQueen, and performance. Less good for: the sexual content is very explicit, the tone is bleak throughout, and the film offers no resolution.