Movie Review: Shame (2011)

"Shame" is a drama about a good-looking successful New Yorker named Brandon (Michael Fassbender) who hides a secret sexual addiction.  Brandon goes to great lengths to fulfill and hide his addiction and his sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) crashing in his apartment throws a wrench in Brandon's efforts.  Not only does Sissy complicate Brandon's life because of his addiction but she brings her own set of issues.  Brandon begins pursuing a coworker but struggles with achieving intimacy with a woman due to his addiction. 

This film is a well-acted case study of addiction, specifically sexual addiction.  In the movie Brandon shows the depths of the addiction and the lengths that he goes to in order to find sex and also hide his behavior.  There's hint of something in his childhood and Sissy's with some of their dialog, her self-distruction, and their seemingly odd relationship (Sissy says "we're not bad people we just come from a bad place.").  However the audience does not get an explanation for why Brandon is the way he is so it's up to interpretation.  A lot of films on addiction issues portray the addict as someone in the gutter or at last resort.  In this film we see a functioning addict in Brandon who chases his compulsion and hides it quite well until his sister inserts herself into his life.  With Sissy there seeing what he's doing Brandon has to face the shame and dispair that he feels.  Fassbender was fearless in his portrayal and I liked Mulligan as well in a very different role for her.

A word about the rating: This film does have a NC-17 rating for explicit sex and I can understand that this might be off-putting for some.  I felt after watching it that with the exception of one scene and Fassbender's full-frontal nudity that this movie was on par with many I've seen that got an R rating.  I say this just to be honest that this film does have sexual scenes and nudity but viewers should make their own decisions about renting or not renting. 

The bottom line is that I feel for the acting and story-telling this film deserves an A-.