Shame
Rent & Buy
Brandon, a thirty-something man living in New York, eludes intimacy with women but feeds his deepest desires with a compulsive addiction to sex. When his younger sister temporarily moves into his apartment, stirring up bitter memories of their shared painful past, Brandon's life, like his fragile mind, gets out of control.
What critics thought
Steve McQueen's film earns broad respect for Fassbender's physically and emotionally exposed performance and for the unflinching seriousness with which it approaches sexual addiction, but critics split sharply over whether the film truly illuminates its subject or merely stages a carefully controlled aesthetic exercise. The gap between admirers who find it rigorous and humane and skeptics who find it rigged and empty is the defining tension in its reception.
“this is a great act of filmmaking and acting. I don't believe I would be able to see it twice.”
Roger Ebert·Chicago Sun-Times
“A mesmerizing companion piece to his 2008 debut, Hunger, this more approachable but equally uncompromising drama likewise fixes its gaze on the uses and abuses of the human body, as Michael Fassbender again strips himself down, in every way an actor can, for McQueen's rigorous but humane interrogation.”
Justin Chang·Variety
“McQueen wants to show how the intensity of Brandon's need shuts him off from real intimacy, but this seems to be a foregone conclusion, the result of an elegant experiment that was rigged from the start.”
A. O. Scott·The New York Times
“Every scene [is] ladled with big dollops of cinema's most respectable cop-out: ambiguity ... Shame wears its emptiness like a badge of honor; McQueen is trying for banal blankness, and though he succeeds in that respect, you kind of wish that a filmmaker (and one with a background as an artist at that) would aspire to do more than just say nothing.”
Ignatiy Vishnevetsky·MUBI
Parents guide
- Violence
- moderate
- Sex
- severe
- Profanity
- severe
- Substances
- moderate
- Intensity
- moderate
Genres
Drama
Cast & Crew
Steve McQueenDirector
Michael FassbenderBrandon
Carey MulliganSissy
James Badge DaleDavid
Nicole BeharieMarianne
Lucy WaltersWoman on Subway Train
Mari-Ange RamirezAlexa
Alex ManetteSteven
Hannah WareSamantha
Elizabeth MasucciElizabeth
Rachel FarrarRachel
Loren OmerLoren
Lauren TyrrellHostess
Abi MorganWriter
Sean BobbittCinematographyShame
Brandon, a thirty-something man living in New York, eludes intimacy with women but feeds his deepest desires with a compulsive addiction to sex. When his younger sister temporarily moves into his apartment, stirring up bitter memories of their shared painful past, Brandon's life, like his fragile mind, gets out of control.
What critics thought
Steve McQueen's film earns broad respect for Fassbender's physically and emotionally exposed performance and for the unflinching seriousness with which it approaches sexual addiction, but critics split sharply over whether the film truly illuminates its subject or merely stages a carefully controlled aesthetic exercise. The gap between admirers who find it rigorous and humane and skeptics who find it rigged and empty is the defining tension in its reception.
“this is a great act of filmmaking and acting. I don't believe I would be able to see it twice.”
Roger Ebert·Chicago Sun-Times
“A mesmerizing companion piece to his 2008 debut, Hunger, this more approachable but equally uncompromising drama likewise fixes its gaze on the uses and abuses of the human body, as Michael Fassbender again strips himself down, in every way an actor can, for McQueen's rigorous but humane interrogation.”
Justin Chang·Variety
“McQueen wants to show how the intensity of Brandon's need shuts him off from real intimacy, but this seems to be a foregone conclusion, the result of an elegant experiment that was rigged from the start.”
A. O. Scott·The New York Times
“Every scene [is] ladled with big dollops of cinema's most respectable cop-out: ambiguity ... Shame wears its emptiness like a badge of honor; McQueen is trying for banal blankness, and though he succeeds in that respect, you kind of wish that a filmmaker (and one with a background as an artist at that) would aspire to do more than just say nothing.”
Ignatiy Vishnevetsky·MUBI
Parents guide
- Violence
- moderate
- Sex
- severe
- Profanity
- severe
- Substances
- moderate
- Intensity
- moderate
Genres
Drama
Cast & Crew
Steve McQueenDirectorMichael FassbenderBrandonCarey MulliganSissyJames Badge DaleDavidNicole BeharieMarianneLucy WaltersWoman on Subway TrainMari-Ange RamirezAlexaAlex ManetteStevenHannah WareSamanthaElizabeth MasucciElizabethRachel FarrarRachelLoren OmerLorenLauren TyrrellHostessAbi MorganWriterSean BobbittCinematographyRent & Buy