CINEMATIC Review

SHAME   **1/2

Steve McQueen

2011

IDEA:  A man's sex addiction slowly consumes him, while his troubled sister who comes to live with him complicates things even further.

BLURB:  Despite a hugely admirable, fervent performance by Michael Fassbender and some particularly effective sequences capturing the inner burnout of his sex-addicted character’s mind, Shame doesn’t have a lot going on underneath it. Its scenes are long and drawn out, some rather potently, the majority irritatingly, only serving to accentuate a script that’s severely undercooked. Visuals and themes are extremely minimalist here, and that may have not been a problem had McQueen decided to flesh out his subjects and their behaviors in ways that weren’t so tenuous. As is, the story is deprived of dimension and subtext, its depiction of a self-destructive man’s plight through addiction psychologically well conveyed, until it becomes clear there’s not much else beyond it.