The introduction of Sissy allows the film some spontaneity and life. He isn't gay, in my opinion, but then how is he heterosexual? He loves no one, is attracted to no one, is driven to find occasions for orgasm - whether alone or in company hardly seems to matter. In one sequence, that involves a gay bar. He knows where to go in order to have sex. McQueen wisely is not specific about the incidents.īrandon lives in a cold, forlorn Manhattan. Does he think he is incapable of ordinary human contact? In time, we will suspect that Brandon and Sissy shared childhood experiences that damaged them. He wants no witnesses to his hookers, his pornography, his masturbation. He flies at her in a rage, telling her to get out. It is Sissy ( Carey Mulligan), his sister, although for a time, we don't know that. One day he comes home and someone is there. Is he flirting? To boldly maintain eye contact is a form of flirting and an aggressive challenge. On the subway, he trades eye contact with a woman who may be flirting. To prostitutes, to co-workers, to strangers. He lives like a man compelled to follow an inevitable course. It will be the first of his many orgasms, solitary and with company, that day. He gets out of bed, goes into the shower and masturbates. He could be a man prepared to commit suicide. The film's opening shot shows Brandon awake in the morning, staring immobile into space. "Shame" makes into a lie the universal assumption in movies that orgasms provide a pleasure to be pursued. One or two of his sexual partners may be attracted to him in the sense that some men are attracted to nymphomaniacs. In "Shame," however, he himself is the only thing being used. The APA is no longer certain it is a disorder. The American Psychiatric Association in 1987 defined it as a mental disorder involving "distress about a pattern of repeated sexual conquests … involving a succession of people who exist only as things to be used." It was referred to in late-night monologues. I remember when the notion of sexual addiction was first being mentioned.
Brandon just sits there, his face impassive, and has better luck. David is a little hyper with his pick-up lines.
Sometimes in the evening, he and his boss, David ( James Badge Dale), go out to drink in singles bars.
He is enduring a sexual function that has long since stopped giving him any pleasure and is self-abuse in the most profound way.īrandon is a good-looking, fit man in his early 30s, who lives alone in a sterile condo in Manhattan. The close-up limits our view to his suffering. There is no concern about the movement of Brandon's lower body. For the movie's writer-director, Steve McQueen, that could be the film's master shot. His character, Brandon, is having an orgasm. There's a close-up in "Shame" of Michael Fassbender's face showing pain, grief and anger.