Shame (2012)

Shame (2012)
Director Steve McQueen’s uncomfortable exploration into sex addiction.

On a mild January evening, I attended a gala screening of newbie director Steve McQueen’s much anticipated Shame, starring Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan. The film was to be shown in London Mayfair’s Curzon cinema, and them beamed around the country to different cinemas, with a special Q&A session with the film’s writers Steve McQueen and Abi Morgan afterwards.

Shame is about a man named Brandon (Fassbender) living in New York, who maintains a well-organised life addicted to sex. He has a good job and nice apartment, and appears to be your average citizen, but underneath his yuppie exterior lives a desperate man who must satisfy his enormous appetite for sexual congress in any way he can. Brandon’s strict routine becomes upset, however, with the arrival of his sister Sissy (Mulligan), a melodramatic self-harmer, whose extroverted nature and clinginess immediately grate upon Brandon, and start to affect his addiction.

McQueen and Morgan offer very little back story to Brandon and Sissy, which creates a sense of normality to their characters. Their behaviour cannot be easily rationalised by past events, instead we view and compare their actions with our own. While Brandon’s life is filled with carnal relations, it is not one of fulfilment, he seems naked throughout the movie, adorning no attachment to people or belief, just the pursuit of intercourse. Moments of tenderness seem uncomfortable for him; any sense of emotion tends to ruin his sex drive, as shown with his attempts to have sex with a colleague which ends with a trouser malfunction due to his growing feelings for her.

Many similarities can be found between Shame and a story like American Psycho. In both, the lead character is a successful professional, whose private life revolves around an addiction to stimulation, and both inhabit New York - the perfect “hunting ground”, a 24-hour city, that prides itself on catering for any kind of need or perversion. However, the difference between the two films is that Patrick Bateman, in American Psycho, has extremely violent tendencies and acts out of rage or boredom, whereas Brandon is simply addicted to sex, in the same way a junkie is addicted to heroin. His lifestyle is not glamorous, or indeed anything to be envied, it is actually quite tragic.

Punishing throughout, McQueen’s film tackles the issues around sex addiction with superb fluency. The film is extremely intimate, to the point of awkward voyeurism, whereby the viewer is almost an accessory to Brandon’s sexual conquests, as well as his private moments of solitude. We watch every aspect of his routine: urinating with the bathroom door open, masturbating in the shower, as well as achieving climax with his bounty of call girls. Also, scenes seem to be extended in order maximise the discomfort for the audience, to great effect. We are kept locked into scenes of Brandon’s lascivious and obsessive behaviour, and forced to witness the depressing nature of his illness, a technique which many great filmmakers have used before.

The themes of the film are deathly sharp, attacking the state of human relationships in the twenty-first century. Brandon’s lifestyle of short relationships that mainly consist of sex may seem alien at first, but, after closer inspection, his ways represent many aspects of our own modern lives. His use of the internet for sexual gratification parallels our own demands for instantaneousness, as well as our dependency upon technology for personal fulfilment. During one scene where Brandon goes on a date with his colleague Marianne, it seems like an unfamiliar world, where strangers would get to know each other through talking, rather than just researching them online. Brandon seems hugely uninterested in any of his date’s history or life, seemingly just going through the motions in order to acquire what he wants: sex. Marianne challenges his way of life, asking him why he would not want to find a partner, to which Brandon seems completely baffled, the idea of “just one woman for the rest of my life” seems completely out of synch with the way the world is. Even “normal” relationships can be seen to have changed, during one scene where Brandon’s boss communicates with his son via a webcam, sorting out some trivial family matter. This e-parenting seems to have become an unavoidable side-effect of our modern age.

Ultimately, the film is about how you deal with life. Whilst Brandon chooses to engage in countless sexual relationships without divulging any of his soul, Sissy gives all of herself to the world, only to have it thrown back at her. Her attempts to forge a relationship with anyone seem doomed from the start, and her knock-backs become the reason for her self-harming. But, whilst Brandon and Sissy may seem extreme cases of human behaviour, are they any better or worse than that of people considered “healthy”. Brandon’s boss, a family man with a wife, consistently engages with females, chatting them up in bars, and ends up bedding Sissy. He stands out as the baddie in the story, whilst Brandon and Sissy are simply damaged.

A remarkably pointed film, one that will keep you thinking long after you have stopped watching. There is plenty to dissect in the way of meaty sub-themes, as well as directorial techniques. A few stand-out scenes, such as the long jogging sequence by Brandon, or the haunting rendition of “New York, New York” by Sissy, make this film a superb start to 2012.