Summary: In New York City, Brandon's carefully cultivated private life -- which allows him to indulge his sexual addiction -- is disrupted when his sister Sissy arrives unannounced for an indefinite stay.
This is a film about control and disconnection but I could not tell you for the life of me if it was successful or not. Michael Fassbender commits fully to the role of Brandon, a sex addict living in New York, he is unable to form meaningful emotional relationships and manages his OCD and stress with his sex addiction and the wonderful Carey Mulligan plays Brandon's mentally unstable sister Sissy. The script leaves a lot unsaid leaving the blanks to be filled in my the viewer which reminded me a lot of French cinema such as Cache. It is beautifully shot, the pace was good and fundamentally it is a story of Brandon hitting bottom.
My main issue with the film is that I didn't form a bond with either Brandon or Sissy. As the script withholds all of Brandon and Sissy's back story it is very hard to have any empathy for either one of them. I know this ploy is probably symbolic to their inability to form emotional relationships but for me really good films should make the viewer invest emotionally in them and with Shame I just didn't overly care what happened to either of the main characters.
I'm sitting on the fence with this one, it is not a standard film about addiction or a life spiralling out of control and for that I give it credit but I just think it could have been pushed further by providing a back story and really pushing towards a devastating end. I felt throughout the film that I was waiting for the penny to drop, for the big twist or the dramatic finale but everything was played down and softly done. I think I just wanted something as powerful as Requiem for a Dream and instead got something which was holding back and maybe too clever for it's own good.
Overall: Not good but not really bad either 3/5.
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