On the basis of Michael Fassbender’s commanding performance
and director McQueen’s low-key style, Shame
is a good film about a difficult subject that deftly avoids most (but
not all) of the tropes of a cautionary “issues” movie you can always find on TV
and occasionally in theaters. Everyone
says that the movie is about sex addiction, but I’m not so sure. Brandon (Fassbender) is a damaged and
solitary person, bordering on sociopathic, who can be an extremely smooth
lady-killer in public but privately is consumed with using sexual excitement to
either distract him from his loneliness or else assuage his deep-seated anger
towards the world. His sister arrives,
invading his privacy, and she is equally mixed up, though in other ways. It’s a scenario straight from the Lifetime
channel but McQueen’s style is so restrained that we are always caught up in
these characters’ situations rather than feeling like we’re being lectured. The only thing I didn’t quite buy was a
charming, good-looking guy like Fassbender having such problems that would be
more plausible in someone socially inept and unappealing. I guess what I’m saying is that Paul Giamatti
(no offense to him) in the same story
would make it much more honest, but Fassbender as a well-to-do New York
businessman does compliment the film’s overall sleek, silvery, modernistic air,
so it's all good.
No comments:
Post a Comment