Shame (18)

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Dir: Steve McQueen

With: Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan

Running time: 100 minutes

SEVERAL disco classics adorn Steve McQueen's drama about sex addiction. Fittingly so, because it is a disco kind of tale – nicely flashy and deliciously trashy. It is also, on close inspection, about as deep as a puddle. If Studio 54 in its heyday made films, they might have looked like this.

Since the director here is Steve McQueen, visual artist and the helmer of Hunger, there is a lot of class as well as sass. Particularly from the lead actor, Michael Fassbender. The Irishman strides through the film so confidently, and with such elan despite the often lurid material, he leaves the film covered in glory. This contrasts with the way he spends a significant part of the picture, which is covered in not very much at all.

With a script by Abi Morgan (The Iron Lady) and McQueen, Shame is the story of a sex addict, Brandon Sullivan (Fassbender).

Funny old affliction, sex addiction; you never hear of ugly, poor people suffering from it. Brandon is meant to be more of an Everyman sort of sex addict. He works in an office in New York, earning enough to keep himself in cashmere overcoats and vinyl records. His flat is all chrome and shiny surfaces, and spotlessly clean, unlike his conscience. Brandon, we soon learn, is addicted to dirty, furtive sex with strangers, and lots of it. Like him, these strangers scrub up well.

Brandon is having a high old time, but secretly loathing himself for it, until the evening his sister Sissy (played by Carey Mulligan) rocks up. With a hint here and a glance there, Brandon's past begins to surface, and his addiction, hitherto manageable, begins to worsen.

This is the weakest part of the film, with McQueen and Morgan trying to suggest there are layers upon layers to Brandon and Sissy, some explanation for the way they behave, but it's not terribly coherent or convincing. The story seems like an afterthought, the last thing that was attended to after the look of the film and the lead performances were sorted out.

Both the visuals and the performances are outstanding, however. Though shooting one of the most photographed cities in the world, McQueen manages to show it in a new light. This is a New York of neon greens and concrete greys, a city where the drop dead glamorous nestles next to the grubby. The old place has rarely looked so nice and sleazy.

Mulligan does her usual small but beautifully formed turn as Sissy, taking a rather cliched character, the kooky, vulnerable, Monroe-esque blonde, and turning her into something far more nuanced. She also gets to show her singing skills, with a version of New York, New York as you've never heard it before.

Fassbender remains the film's centre of attention. McQueen directed him to one of his finest performances in Hunger, a portrait of Bobby Sands, and he does so again here. With those leading man, lupine looks of his, Fassbender could have made the character look like the jammiest dodger in the world. Instead, Brandon genuinely seems more like a man in agony rather than ecstasy.

The film is an 18 certificate, and means it. Not one to watch with mother, unless she is very broad minded, or even if she likes her dramas with a bit more substance than is to be found here. But if you're in the mood for a glitterball experience at the movies, let those little town shoes stray in Shame's direction.