SEX AND THE CITY (SHAME)

In 1973, English academic Laura Mulvey shook up conventional film criticism with her essay 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema'.


In this seminal and controversial work, Mulvey drew on the theories of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan to argue that classic Hollywood movies were almost entirely shot from a male perspective.

Her essay claimed because of this, audiences were forced to adopt a "male gaze" which determined the way female characters were portrayed onscreen.

While male characters tended to be active and drive the plots of films, she observed their female counterparts were largely reduced to secondary, supporting roles where they had little impact on the storyline and were there for the purposes of sexual objectification.

Mulvey subdivided the male gaze into two camps - the fetishistic gaze (where movies tended to portray women characters as Madonnas) and the voyeuristic gaze (where women were depicted as whores).

Laura Mulvey's male gaze is the first thing that comes to the mind in the opening sequence of Londoner Steve McQueen's second feature film as a director, 'Shame'.

As no doubt most of you will know by now, 'Shame' tells the story of Brandon (played by Irish actor Michael Fassbender), a New York yuppie who is addicted to sexual gratification.

The movie begins on a New York subway train, with Brandon eyeing up a woman sitting opposite him.

The audience sees what Brandon sees - the flirtatious glances of the woman opposite (the fetishistic gaze), the crossing of her legs (the voyeuristic gaze). However the scene soon turns more sinister.

Brandon has adopted the cold stare of animal circling its prey and when she gets off the subway stop, he doggedly pursues her only to lose her in the crowd.

'Shame' takes the male gaze to the extreme but does so in a way that is compelling and not as alienating as you might expect.

It does not condone or glamourise Brandon's behaviour. But it doesn't reject him either as he struggles to get by in a soulless city.

New York in McQueen's movie is a jungle of glass, concrete and neon, of bright light and occasional darkness - a wild place where some of the inhabitants seek instant, almost frantic gratification.

Brandon's neat Manhattan apartment functions as a den where he satisfies his cravings online or with others, including prostitutes, without a shred of conscience, compassion or emotional attachment. 

At one point he proudly tells a co-worker, Marianne (Nicole Beharie) on their first date that he has never been in a relationship that has lasted more than four months and that he doesn't understand the need for people to get married.

However Brandon's world is thrown completely out of kilter with the sudden arrival of his needy, fragile sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan).

He is no longer in complete control of his own den but Sissy poses a much greater threat than that. She brings emotional baggage that he has sought to shed and her mere presence is enough to anger him.

In one brilliantly acted scene, Brandon's unease with her reaches boiling point when Sissy goes back to the apartment with his sleazy married boss David (James Badge Dale). 

As he listens to Sissy and David's foreplay, he paces the apartment like a distressed animal - seething with a mixture of anger, concern, confusion and, possibly, jealously. Faced with fight or flight, he chooses flight - opting to jog at night through the streets of Manhattan in a wonderfully shot sequence.

There's no doubt when it comes to the acting in McQueen's movie, 'Shame' is very much Fassbender's film - although Mulligan is a perfect foil.

Both actors should justifiably feel aggrieved that their emotionally and, at times, literally naked performances were not rewarded with Oscar nominations.

In a hugely committed performance that suggests that he could become a viable challenger to Daniel Day Lewis, Fassbender channels the spirit of Harvey Keitel's damaged, hard drinking, drug fuelled, gambling addict of a New York cop in Abel Ferrara's 'Bad Lieutenant'.

Brandon may be more middle class (also oddly reminiscent of Brett Easton Ellis's yuppie serial killer Patrick Bateman in his novel 'American Psycho') but he is no less tormented, depraved and trapped than Keitel's character. 

The subject may well have been too much for conservative members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to stomach but it would be a mistake to write McQueen's film off as simply being obsessed with sex and sexuality.

Yes, 'Shame' deals with sex addiction but in reality it could be about any addiction. The movie is more interested in the forces that drive addicts, whatever their outlet, to orgies of self-destruction.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the scene where Brandon attempts to pick up a girl in front of her muscular boyfriend in a downtown Manhattan bar. His comments and actions are repulsive, deliberately provocative and he appears in this act of self-loathing to be inviting violence. In truth, his behaviour is not really all that different from the behaviour of an aggressive drunk.

But the real strength in McQueen and Abi Morgan's screenplay is not so much what is said but what is unsaid or simply alluded to.

There is something in Brandon and Sissy's past that has damaged them both but we can't quite detect what it is.

At one point, Sissy declares: "We're not bad people. We just come from a bad place."

And as she performs a stripped down version of 'New York, New York' in a posh Manhattan piano bar, Brandon's eyes mysteriously well up and he sheds a tear.

McQueen, a former Turner Prize winner, shows the same visual flair he demonstrated in his 2008 collaboration with Fassbender, 'Hunger' in which the German born but Kerry raised actor played the IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands. 

He is aided by some sharp cinematography by Sean Bobbitt, smart editing by Joe Walker and an intelligent use of music, mixing the songs of Blondie and Chic with John Coltrane and Glenn Gould.

'Shame' is a mature piece of cinema but a very tough watch. It will not satisfy those looking for light escapism and it refuses to answer all the questions it poses. 

However it will linger long in the memory and it makes the prospect of a third Fassbender and McQueen collaboration (their version of Solomon Northup's 'Twelve Years A Slave') very exciting indeed.

('Shame opened in UK and Irish cinemas on January 13, 2012. This review originally appeared on Eamonnmallie.com)