Shame

United Kingdom 2012, 99 mins
Director: Steve Mcqueen
Starring: Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan

Synopsis Interview with Michael Fassbender

Fassbender plays Brandon, a man for whom sex is a compulsion that keeps him isolated from any form of intimacy. He has a successful career and an expensive apartment, living a solitary life both fuelled and undermined by his obsession.

His sister, Sissy (Mulligan), is a mess of another kind. She arrives uninvited and stays. Unwelcome, she won't leave. The film is a haunting and vividly realistic account of the effects of a dysfunctional family (the causes of which are never discussed) on the next generation.

Like McQueen's previous film, HUNGER, SHAME finds beauty and grace in improbable situations and people. Fassbender, frighteningly good as a man in the grip of a complex addiction, won the award for Best Actor at Venice 2011, while Mulligan further cements her own credentials as a new star to keep watching.