1 Time Film Excess Nominee:
Best Supporting Actress: Carrey Mulligan (lost to Agnieszka Grochowska for In Darkness)
 |
| A neat poster for Steve McQueen's Shame |
QUICK REVIEW:
In Shame we follow a man living in New York, who is obsessed with sex. His sister shows up and lives at his place for a period, very much against his will, while she has an affair with his boss.
Shame is an intense film with long, uninterrupted takes, co-written by Abi Morgan (The Invisible Woman (2013)) and British director Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave (2013)). Due to the sexual tensions in the sex addiction-themed story, it has an attraction that McQueen's only previous feature, the dismal Hunger (2008) didn't have.
It is well-acted by especially a luminous Carey Mulligan (An Education (2009)), who gives what must be the saddest rendition of New York, New York ever put to film in one scene, and James Badge Dale (The Departed (2006)). Michael Fassbender (X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)) plays the self-destructive, unsympathetic lead, a character who, however, never attains much interest on my part.
The film's title, - Shame - doesn't seem to have any great relevance to what we see in the film. - Who feels shame? (No-one.) The lack of any back stories for the two main characters, besides an implication that they might both have ben subjected to sexual abuse as kids, also adds to the vibe that the film creates, which is that people with big sexual appetites are simply miserable. Film critic Donald Clarke of The Irish Times has, very incisively and apropos, called Shame's Puritanism "more than a little oppressive." It sure is. While the film is well-made and uncompromisingly downbeat, I also continue to find its style a bit auteur-pompous, and it will likely never become a favorite with me.
Related posts:
Steve McQueen: 12 Years a Slave (2013) - The inhumanity of slavery portrayed forcefully in awesome film
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
 |
| Carey Mulligan is amazing in Steve McQueen's Shame |
Watch the trailer here
Cost: 4.2 mil. £
Box office: 11.1 mil. £
= Box office success
[Shame got an NC-17 rating in the US, which was accepted, even welcomed (perhaps mostly as a challenge) by its distributor there, Fox Searchlight Pictures, who paid 400k $ for the distribution rights. It made 4 mil. $ (36 % of the total gross) in the US. The film won many awards and nominations and made it onto many top 10 lists of the year, including the #2 spot on Roger Ebert's.]
What do you think of Shame?
No comments:
Post a Comment