SHAME (Steve McQueen 2011)

[Chris Knipp]

SHAME, AGAIN

A cold wall of sex in Manhattan

Shame goes into wider release in the US today (Dec. 2, 2011). You don't need to see it, but you probably will want to know about it. It may even come up at Oscar time. I reviewed it as part of this year's New York Film Festival. Shame is a film about a handsome but very cold New York corporate employee who is a raging sex addict. It stars Michael Fassbender (Inglourious Basterds; X-Men: First Class]) and Cary Mulligan (Drive and An Education).

The director, Steve McQueen, is the Turner Prize-winning British visual artist whose stunning and relentless depiction of the imprisonment and death of Bobby Sands in Hunger won the first-time filmmaker Caméra d'Or award at Cannes in 2008. Hunger starred Michael Fassbender in a physically wrenching performance that put him on the international map as a film actor. Fassbender and McQueen have teamed up a second time for an equally extreme but far different theme in Shame.

Shame debuted at Venice and was shown also at Toronto; and New York, where it was screened for this review. Fox Searchlight bought the film for US release December 2, 2011. The French release is to be December 7; UK, January 13, 2012. In the US it has received an NC-17 rating.

You'll find the original Filmleaf review of Shame here.