Useless "art" -- Steve McQueen's SHAME shows Fassbender & Mulligan to little effect

You may want to steal the first shot from SHAME -- the follow-up film to Steve McQueen's impressive debut, Hunger -- and hang it on your wall in pride of place. It's that close to perfect. Simple, as so many near-perfect things are, it's just a shot of Michael Fassbender between the sheets, his pale, slightly pink skin stark against the monochromatic gray-green of the bedclothes. But the composition, the cropping -- literally everything that goes into art and photography -- simply nails you. Then the movie begins, and that, you soon discover, was pretty much it.

With Hunger, McQueen, shown at right, used his photographic art to tell the story of Bobby Sands (Fassbender again), the IRA and the hunger strike that eventually took the rebel's life. It was a grueling movie, and a gorgeous one. Sometimes a little too gorgeous: a shit-scrawled wall was probably never meant to look like a work of art. With Shame, this director seems less concerned with making every frame artful-to-the-max. But, whether due to the constraints of the "story" (such as it is), he has also neglected to make it much of anything else.

Fassbender, above, whom I have never seen give anything less that an excellent performance -- until now -- plays a sex addict named Brandon, whose sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan, below) arrives unexpectedly and asks to stay with him. I would call Sissy his "estranged" sister, except that Brandon appears to be estranged from everything and everyone, except the call of his needy prick.

Sissy's being around makes our guy increasingly uncomfortable. But then so does everything else: his boss, his co-workers, even the many hits with whom he has sex. That's it for the movie's plot (until heavy-duty melodrama sets in and we get an embarrassing mea culpa scene in the rain and mud), and there is even less characterization. This emptiness of character occurs despite performances from literally everyone that -- in another movie in which the director and his writer (The Iron Lady's Abi Morgan, with the help of Mr. McQueen) had endowed their cast with anything approaching complex characters -- would have had us at "hello."

This film is one lengthy goodbye, and as the never-explained negatives pile up, we can't wait to see the thing end (its 101 minutes begin to see like hours). I am more than willing to believe that sex addicts, like most addicts of any kind, are never really having much fun. But you can't build a scenario around sex-addiction as your main character's sole feature -- even with an actor as gorgeous of face and body as Mr. Fassbender, who unveils both, from front and rear, and proves engaging and beautiful from all angles. There is one incredible shot of him -- from the rear, standing above a toilet with his legs slightly spread -- in which his body makes a perfect "V" on top and then a perfect inverted "V" from the waist down. (Although we were told that his full-frontal shots were quite something, as well, the movie proves a cheat on this score, as the actor's seemingly ample package is mostly shown in shadow. (Perhaps, for the U.S. theatrical run, the movie was trimmed slightly?)

Ms Mulligan gets her time in the full-frontal sun, too, but she really shines brightest during her very odd gig, singing in a restaurant (or it it a night club?) in which she warbles, above, in a reedy, faint but lovely voice, Kander & Ebb's New York, New York as though it were a dirge.  And damned if the song doesn't work like that -- beautifully, too.

Otherwise the movie itself is a dirge, a deadly one in which, for all his artful framing and muted color palettte, McQueen has nothing to say except embarrassing cliché.  Hints (if they are even meant as that) to various meanings abound at every possibility from the incest taboo to closeted homosexuality to intimacy inability. But when anything and everything is possible, nothing much matters.  

Shame, from Fox Searchlight, is currently playing around most big cities, at various venues, hoping to pick up some Academy nomina-tions. (Good luck.) Click here to find those venues nearest you.

Northside Film Fest: nice mix of movies in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Take a look!

What the world needs now is not another film festival (unless its content helps plug a certain oil spill), but I have to say that an email I received yesterday sure piqued my interest.  First of all, this particular fest -- NORTHSIDE FILM, a new addition to the second annual Northside Festival opening this Thursday, June 24, and running through Sunday, June 27 -- takes place in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, land of the artsy, up-and-coming and a fun place to visit.  Second: its very well-chosen, interesting and quite varied film programs -- eight of them -- are the kind that TrustMovies would jump at the opportunity to view. Third: this is the kind of festival that you can easily get your head around, for it unfurls over only four days, with two evening programs on each of those days at 8 and 10 pm.

The price is appealing, too, as the tickets cost but $9 (and you don't have to be a senior or a seven-year-old to get that rate).  It's even cheaper ($6.25 per event) if you buy a Badge that entitles you to see all the movies. Plus, the venue itself sounds like fun: indieScreen, a new 100-capacity art-house-movie-theater-meets-music-venue-meets-restaurant-and-bar (whew!) opening on Kent Ave & 2nd St.

You can find the entire film program here, and the festival's music schedule here.  While all eight of the film events sound plenty good, several of them stand out, one of which I've already seen:  Todd Solondz's LIFE DURING WARTIME (to be released later this summer via IFC Films). 

Solondz -- of Welcome to the Dollhouse, Happiness, Storytelling and Palindromes -- is among America's best and most original filmmakers, and Life During Wartime finds him at the top of his form. In it, he takes characters from his earlier Happpiness and runs them through the wringer (gentle cycle) one more time.  If you haven't seen that earlier movie, don't fret: Wartime stands on its own just fine.  In fact, the first time I saw the film -- at last year's New York Film Festival -- I didn't even realize that the writer/director had recycled many of the same characters from his Happiness.  (Though the cast is completely different, the situation in the two films struck me as similar, but since I am not good at remembering the names of most movie characters, I didn't worry about it.)

Solondz's unique gift is to be able to create the oddest scenarios peopled with the strangest characters and make all this seem somehow appropriate, if not normal, so that soon we are laughing with, as well as at, his people while growing to love them and hoping for -- if not the best, at least something good. He achieves all this in even stronger fashion in this film, so I cannot recommend Life During Wartime strongly enough.  (Click here for my earlier review, from last year's New York Film Fest.)

 

THE FEAST OF STEPHEN, written and directed by James Franco, remains unseen by me, but as Mr. Franco is among our best and brightest young actors, anything and everything he does is worth tracking down, so far as I am concerned. And even if you hate his short film, its running time is only five minutes, so what can you lose? Making its debut at this year's Berlinale (winning the Best Short Film prize) and earlier this month at the CineVegas fest, "Feast" seems to divide audiences, while pouring more fuel on the "Is Franco gay?" question. But, as I always say: gay, straight, good, bad, only "the thing itself " counts.  So let's watch the film, and then we'll talk. On the same program is Jake Yuzna's OPEN, which won the Jury Prize at that Berlin fest. I know nothing about this 90-minute film, except what I learned from the IMDB: "Interweaving love stories centering on real individuals who are utilizing medicine to explore new frontiers of love, sex, and the human form."

Finally there is CENTURION, the new film from Neil Marshall, a writer/director whose work I very much like, who has earlier given us Dog Soldiers (the best werewolf movie since The Howling and/or An American Werewolf in London and the underrated Paris version) and Doomsday, a dark, slambang, knock-your-socks-off, post-apocalyptic thriller). Marshall's most popular movie, The Descent (he only co-produced its sequel) is my least favorite of his work, but I wouldn't miss this new one, in which it appears that he tackles the early days of the Roman/British connection in a kind of cross between Gladiator and The Last Legion.  Centurion stars the wonderfully versatile and sexy Michael Fassbender, whom I'd view in just about anything, plus an additional bunch of good actors.  Cuter than Crowe and every bit as good an actor, Fassbender probably lobs phones at hotel staff more gently, too.

So that's it, film fans. The next move is yours.   But I would definitely stick Northside Film on your list of things to do in the days to come. Again, here's the schedule.