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Canberra Today 11°/15° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Review: “Shame” (R) ****

“SHAME” puts sex-addict Brandon (Michael Fassbender) at odds with his beautiful but emotionally fragile, aspiring-singer sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan). Each is the other’s only family, with an enthusiastic libido, physically beautiful at the most fundamental level, that is, nude – full frontal. Neither knows how to handle emotional attachment or commitment to the other or anybody else.

Brandon is obsessively tidy. Sissy is not. That difference creates conflict when she moves into his condo. The elephant in the room is the implicit barrier of cultural conditioning preventing their coming together sexually.

Director Steve McQueen sets the film’s stylistic bars at impressive heights. Long one-take sequences, powerfully acted, probe Brandon‘s issues – with Sissy, with a beautiful Afro-American colleague (Nicole Behari), running alone through New York’s midnight streets trying to exorcise personal demons.

“Shame” is a significant film, despite its often disconcerting contents.  Fassbender and Mulligan give well-nigh faultless performances. Its nudity and explicit sexual passages are frank yet not salacious. Its outcome’s brutal honesty leaves us wondering where that elephant really is right now.

At Greater Union and Dendy

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Dougal Macdonald

Dougal Macdonald

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