Shame (Sunday, October 9, 2011) (89)

I think that Steve McQueen's fist feature, Hunger (2009), was one of the best films of that year and one of the best films of the past five or so years. It has a frankness and a narrative structure that is stunning and has as a subtle beauty that comes around only occasionally in movies. His follow-up film, Shame, sadly lacks all of those qualities. It is a stupid movie that trades in shock more than substance and doesn't amount to much of anything, borrowing frequently from the elegant style of the first film, but with totally banal results.

The film tells the story of a Wall Street banker-type guy (Michael Fassbender) who is a sex addict who fucks any woman he wants (he's incredibly hot, of course, so he can) and fucks a lot of them. He has relationships with prostitutes and online video-chat strippers, to say nothing of strangers he meets on the R train in the subway or at bars. He also has a sister (the tiresome and forgettable Carey Mulligan) who is a bit of a mess who ruins his mojo for unexplained reasons. Once he loses it, he can't get it back and his world crumbles.

There is a lot of nudity here (full frontal male!) and lots of frank sex. It all is just superficial, though, as it really doesn't mean anything. Who cares that his world is built on control and domination and when he loses control of everything, it tips over off it's precarious perch? One of the saddest moments of the film is when he goes on a date with a coworker and the dinner scene is a cheap rip-off of the magnificent long-take scene of Bobby Sands talking to the Priest in Hunger. Here it's just a cheap trick and packs no punch. Perhaps its that the brilliant Enda Walsh co-wrote the script for Hunger with McQueen, while he didn't work on this one... I don't know, but the end result is forgettable and dumb. What a shame. By far the biggest cinematic disappointment of recent years.

Stars: 1.5 of 4