60379888
Michael Fassbender may just give the best male performance of the year in “Shame,” a racy sex-addiction drama from British filmmaker Steve McQueen, who previously directed Fassbender in the 2008 masterpiece “Hunger.”
“Shame” sees Fassbender play Brandon, a wealthy New Yorker with a nondescript corporate job whose carnal desires dominate and devastate his life. Finding meaningless partners seems a nightly ritual, workdays are broken up by bathroom masturbation sessions, and porn is so abundant that Brandon’s computer is crashing while his closet teems with smut mags. To this hollow man, Fassbender brings a stunning new dimension of his signature intensity, and a sinking degradation that’s eventually wrenching to watch.
“Shame” is first and foremost a feast of fine acting, with Fassbender nearly matched by Carey Mulligan, who also reveals new layers as Sissy, Brandon’s tumbleweed of a sister who throws off her brother’s soul-eating mojo when she shows up at his doorstep with nowhere else to crash. Together, these two hint at a mysteriously destructive youth that’s made both of them seriously disturbed adults, and the actors’ rapport offers just enough intel to keep you filling in the haunting gaps.
Unfortunately, that’s about where the interest of “Shame” ends. “Hunger” not only announced Fassbender as a formidable acting force, it also introduced McQueen as a thrilling new talent, with enough visual flair and professional promise to sate any art-house buff. That the promise is not kept with “Shame” is one of 2011’s biggest disappointments. While he succeeds at presenting New York as a tough city of appetites, McQueen takes a drastically superficial approach, allowing the skin-deep nature of his antihero to infect his filmmaking.
For a movie so ostensibly uncompromising (its graphic sex and full-frontal shots netted it an NC-17 rating), “Shame” shows compromise at every other turn, holding your hand throughout Brandon’s banal escapades, hardly living up to the aesthetic brilliance that “Hunger” displayed, and blowing the opportunity to be the definitive sex-addiction drama. This is no coital “Lost Weekend”; it’s a lost opportunity.
Shame
NC-17
Two reels out of four
Opens Friday at the Ritz Five
Recommended Rental
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
PG-13
Available Tuesday
Modern special effects don’t get much better than those in “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” the blockbuster prequel to everyone’s favorite primate sci-fi saga. The effects wizards at Weta Digital and character actor Andy Serkis — who plays ape revolutionary Caesar — bring motion-capture technology to the next level, finally offering a CG creation that outshines the flesh-and-blood actors.
The meat of the story, unfortunately, is lean when it should be thick (real-world commentary is meager at best), but that’s no reason to miss out on this well-staged spectacle. SPR
Contact the South Philly Review at editor@southphillyreview.com.
60379878
60379893
