We're Not Bad People.

SHAME (2011)

Here's a challenge: how do you make sex with two beautiful actors look repulsive and ugly on screen? The repetition. The uncomfortable expressions on the actors faces. All the quiet little details that give the scene the edge of unease it needs to make the audience squirm in their seats...and not in a good way. Shame follows the life of Brandon Sullivan (Michael Fassbender)--the man all the girls want and all the guys want to be. He's a successful business man and attractive bachelor with no emotional commitments to weigh him down. He's also a sex addict of the ADD generation whose inner demons rear their ugly heads when his down-and-out sister (Carey Mulligan) moves in with him and upsets the delicate balance of his sanity.

One of the real accomplishments of Shame is that director Steve McQueen manages to take the very temptations that Hollywood so often uses to draw people to the box office--sex, beautiful women, attractive actors--and twists in it on its head. The magic of this subtle yet brilliant little trick is the fact that instead of buying into a "time is money" feel, McQueen lingers in every scene. We have long, fleshed out gazes into Brandon's life instead of brief snippets and highlights. At one point, Brandon goes on a date, and we get the first ten minutes of the date in a single shot, getting everything from what food they order to the way they awkwardly stumble from topic to topic with nervous first date smiles. By dragging the scene out without any snappy cuts and breaks, we've ceased to become movie-watchers and instead become voyeurs, hooked on watching these characters bear themselves bit by bit.

McQueen doesn't bother with trying to explain why Brandon is the way he is or what led him and his sister to lead such self-destructive lives with distracting flashbacks and forced exposition; instead, he holds us in every second of the painful present and doesn't let go. As Michael Fassbender said, "There is no place to hide in this whole script." Between the fearless acting, the solid script, and the unflinching eye of Steve McQueen, Shame is, if nothing else, the most courageous film of the year. The characters bare themselves (literally and figuratively) again and again, yet, like Brandon, when the film tempts us with "Want to play?", we find ourselves unable to look away.