SHAME written and directed by Steve McQueen, with Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan and Nicole Beharie. An Alliance Films release. 99 minutes. Opens Friday (December 2). For venues and times, see Movies. Rating: NNN
It’s a pity writer/director Steve McQueen has already made a movie called Hunger that’d be an equally suitable title for this study of a successful New York suit (Michael Fassbender) who’s a slave to his sexual compulsions.
Fassbender lays himself bare in every way imaginable. His measured physicality, and McQueen’s framing of it, brings to mind Christian Bale’s eroticized self-regard in American Psycho. (McQueen uses that movie as a reference point, though the motivations here are considerably more realistic.) But the forceful visual sensibility that worked so well in the abstract Hunger isn’t suited to the more human-scale story McQueen’s telling here, and Shame’s set pieces feel like showy flourishes rather than grace notes that clarify and amplify the drama.
Co-star Carey Mulligan is terribly miscast in a key role – she’s just not credible as her character or as Fassbender’s sister. And McQueen finds the perfect ending in the final reel but shoots right on past it, the better to pile on two or three more big emotional moments.
