Why Don't We Do It in the Road? (A Shame review)

Sometimes things go better in pairs. It helped Noah organise the passengers for his Ark, it's mostly prevented us from wearing odd shoes, and it's often the basis of fruitful collaborations: Bert & Ernie, Abbott & Costello, Alcohol & Regret. This extends to art as well; Dalí couldn't have functioned without the aid of his muse Gala. John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote some of the most renowned pop songs of all time, and neither produced as good work separately.

And, of course, there's the world of film. Given how prevalent the auteur theory is in film criticism, and the importance we place on directors, we can't help but pay special attention to the interplay between them and certain collaborators. Would Werner Herzog be cinema's lovable crazy uncle without Klaus Kinski driving him on? Probably not. Martin Scorsese would never have made Raging Bull were it not for De Niro visiting him in hospital with a copy of Jake La Motta's autobiography. Sometimes a creative partner just brings out the best in a director, and we're seeing something similar in the relationship between Michael Fassbender and Steve McQueen.

No, not that one.

That one.

(Normally I'd put an alternative poster up, but the one I've chosen is pretty NSFW, you'll see why after the jump.)

See what I mean? Used for the Hungarian release, artist unknown.

McQueen comes to film from the world of visual art, with a Turner Prize to his name (in the same year as Tracey Emin's My Bed), a career as an official war artist in Iraq, and whose main filming experience has been short minimalist pieces, often silent and in black-and-white, designed to be projected onto the wall of a gallery, a la his idol Andy Warhol. There's a starkness to his work, both in the presentation and the subject matter. His first short, Bear, depicts two men wrestling who alternate between aggression and eroticism in their actions. 2002's Western Deep, about migrants working in the TauTona Gold Mine, is set in claustrophobic environments and scored with the cacophonous sound of drilling.

In short, he's a very visceral artist, and not only has that carried over to his films - part of the acclaim given to 12 Years a Slave is for how raw and ugly the violence is and how the film never shies away from it - but he's been given an actor who is more than happy to indulge him in it. The German-Irish Fassbender has a reputation for pushing himself in any role, no matter how dire the film (see Jonah Hex, or rather don't), and often seeking challenging material. His first collaboration with McQueen, Hunger, saw him lose thirty pounds and go on a 600 calorie diet to play Bobby Sands, a captive IRA member going on a hunger strike. Combine that with his brooding intensity and dark charisma - it's rare you'll see him in a film where he doesn't grit his teeth - and you have a potential successor to Kinski or, maybe more accurately, Daniel Day-Lewis, a talented and passionate performer determined, almost obsessively, to make the most of his career.

While not as brutal as Hunger or 12 Years, their second work together, 2011's Shame mines similar dark territories. Fassbender plays Brandon, a successful Manhattanite who works in marketing and constantly has sex on the brain. No exaggeration - he sees an attractive woman on the subway and orgasmic moans play in his head. He routinely masturbates at home, in the shower, and even at work; he downloads so much porn that it leads to his company's computer system getting hit with a virus. He has a constant stream of prostitutes, night in night out. He's basically every Bret Easton Ellis character existing at once - handsome, well-to-do, hypersexual.

There's not really much of a plot to speak of, being more of a character study. Brandon's closed-off lifestyle is interrupted by the sudden arrival of his troubled sister, creatively named Sissi (Carey Mulligan), whose coming out of a bad relationship, judging by the tearful calls made within five minutes of her introduction. She's all passion and lack of inhibition, where he's icy and controlled. Her presence knocks Brandon off-kilter, forcing him to take stock of his damaging behaviour, and popping the bubble he's been living in for quite some time.

I've had to be careful about the choice of photos I normally include in these reviews because Shame, appropriately for the source material, is incredibly graphic. Within the first few minutes, we've seen Brandon walk around bollock-naked, his tackle in centre-frame. He engages in feral, simian wanking and fucks like he's going for the Gold at the O-face Olympics, going through all the acts and positions that an NC-17 rating will allow.

Normally, any film that features sex this much would be classified as pornographic, but that would imply it's meant to arouse. We refer to scenes of cities falling in Michael Bay and Roland Emmerich films as "disaster porn" because they're shot in a stylised, often titillating way. Shame drains the eroticism whenever it can; in one long take, we see a nude Brandon walk to the toilet to take a slash. Any arousal a viewer got from seeing Fassbender's wang is swiftly chilled. Brandon has a genuinely intimate moment with his co-worker Marianne (Nicole Beharie), and the two clearly like each other, but can't get it up, making up for it by having rough lifeless sex against the window with another women later on. You would only be turned on by this if literally any depiction of sexual activity is enough to get you going.

There's a clear line in the sand being drawn - reaching orgasm just for the rush it gives you isn't healthy. Brandon is addicted to sex, and it's rendered him cold and apathetic to anything else. The early scenes of the film are set in stark environments, all polished white walls and angular chrome skyscrapers, tasteful but sterile. McQueen's trademark long takes resurface, once during a rendition of "New York New York" that goes on seemingly forever, during a bonding moment with Sissi that swiftly gets spiky and uncomfortable, and when Brandon goes for a run after overhearing his sister in bed with his boss, as a visual metaphor of him running away from his problems, something he does quite a lot. He gets pretty far, but ultimately ends up right back where he started. Sex itself is shot without charge, as cold empty gestures performed against walls and windows, with no recognisable passion. The only truly sensual moment is Brandon's fling with Marianne, where there's actual emotional interaction and chemistry.

Frustratingly, Shame never seems to have any more to say about sex addiction, other than the fact it exists, and even that statement seems to be off. The American Psychiatric Association removed it from the most recent version of the DSM-5 in 2013, and with good reason. Recent studies have shown that sex addiction, or hypersexuality, shows nothing other than high libido. There's a distinctive brain pattern when it comes to addiction, for example addiction to narcotics, and that wasn't found in volunteers' responses to sexual images.

So what is Brandon's problem? There's clearly something wrong if he can't function without jerking it five times a day, and his attempt to go cold turkey with porn just sends him spiralling down further (apparently so far he'll let anyone give him head). It's possible his addiction is a symptom of something greater; given how he avoids contact with his family, how much he buries his stress and anxiety, and Sissi's own suicidal tendencies, he might have depression, probably caused by something in his past, and sex is just the thing he's addicted to. Brian Wilson and Trent Reznor have both struggled with the illness, and filled that particular hole by becoming gym fanatics. Social anxiety, maybe, since he avoids human contact whenever possible; his hook-ups are brief, he's unable to get an erection when with a woman he loves, and even when engaged with a camgirl, he masturbates in his bathroom, alone.

But that's all subtext, and there's no real conclusion or climax (no pun intended), it just kind of...stops, ending on an ambiguous note about whether or not he's changed. Shame, despite its subject matter, is awfully subtle, dropping hints about Brandon and Sissy's shady childhood and their characterisation, and the largely improvised dialogue and bravura performances from Fassbender and Mulligan makes it feel real. But it feels just short of being truly great. For a film so centred on a message, it never really explores much beyond the surface. As it is, Shame is a compelling drama that's very good, but not quite out of the chrysallis.

Photo Credits (top to bottom): A gauche Et droite, Empire Magazine, Flicks and Bits, Beames on Film, Rock 'N Roll Ghost.