Starring: Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan – Director: Steve McQueen – Rating: 18
After more than a week of cinema from around the globe, this year’s Bath Film Festival draws to a close with a display of some of the best emerging talent in the British Isles. Shame is an unflinching depiction of a man struggling with addiction and the loss of free will, and the small but powerful cast and director Steve McQueen’s sparse editing make watching it an intense, almost claustrophobic experience. It’s probably of the most shocking films of the year and almost certainly a terrible choice for a first date, but above all it’s a harrowing reminder of the dramatic power of cinema.
Michael Fassbender’s had success at the box office with X-Men: First Class and Jane Eyre, but his turn as tortured sex addict Brandon is the highlight of a strong year. Brandon is desperate to get away from himself, his acquaintances and his airless New York apartment. Fassbender moves with a desperate restlessness, and throughout the film his body is tense and contorted, like a wild animal in a too-small cage. The sudden reappearance of his sister (Carey Mulligan) only hastens the collision between his fears of codependency and his self-loathing at the extremes he’s driven to by his addiction.
Mulligan, often cast as the innocent in films like An Education and Drive, shows new vulnerability and anger as the self-destructive Sissy. She craves the human connection Brandon fears, and when he responds to her pleas by lashing out, it is devastating. “We’re not bad people, we just come from a bad place,” Sissy tells Brandon, but the film refuses to reveal exactly what that place is. By allowing the audience to fill in the blanks for themselves, McQueen prevents us from pigeon-holing Brandon and Sissy with specific traumas; instead, they become more universal figures.
Some Bathonians might disagree. In producer Iain Canning’s Q&A session immediately after Friday’s screening, one audience member wondered if Shame passed judgement on modern New York, while another commented that London was similar; however, the idea that Bath could also be in the same state was quickly met with a raucous “No!”
Despite the laughs, and Bath’s outward dissimilarity towards Shame’s barren urban purgatory,many left the Little Theatre in a meditative mood. This is only McQueen’s second feature, but between this and 2008’s Hunger (also starring Fassbender), he’s certainly one to watch. Some moments at this year’s festival, like the Ken Loach retrospective, encouraged us to consider the past of British film; Shame proves we still have plenty to look forward to.
Iris Faraway
