"Shame" Movie Review

This is not a film about flowers blooming in the summer, romantic carriage rides in the fall or watching sunsets in an exotic far off land. This is a story filled with remorse, pain, anguish, desperation and massive amounts of self destruction and isolation. It's a shot of the strongest tequila, with no salt or lime to make its rawness sweeter. "Shame" is no picnic and if you're looking to watch a story that will give you butterflies or titillate your intellect you will be disappointed. The only thing you feel is a painful void, as if you've been punched in the stomach by a Viking.
This is the type of film society needs. We need to see what's truly going on in the world and the truth is most definitely revealed in this tale about Brandon Sullivan, a successful New Yorker, played by a brilliant Michael Fassbender, and his frightening sex addiction. Despite his rather cool and composed demeanor, he is drowning in a river of sexual torment and loneliness. His addiction has replaced the few important factors in life, one being Sissy, his self destructive sister, played by a disheveled Carey Mulligan, who only wants him to love her. Fassbender is emotionally crippled by his affliction and the only way he seems to feel alive is when there is zero intimacy involved. No pillow talk, no first date, no sharing common interests...just sex. And by sex, I mean a hungry, frantic, hard-boiled kind of sex. The kind you fantasize about yet are embarrassed to talk about.
With the arrival of his disorderly sister, he sinks deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole of emotional deterioration. There is no solace for him anywhere in his personal life, except between the thighs of strangers and other "night walkers" like himself. There's a scene in the film where he goes running at night, as if he's trying to escape his curse. There's no running away from it, though. One glance from a pretty redhead on the subway, and as Kings of Leon so eloquently put it, his "sex is on fire."
I won't go into any details regarding the plot but I will tell you that this haunting film will leave you thirsty for someone to talk to. It may be too "European" of a movie for some, since a question mark replaces the period of the final scene and the sex scenes are brutally explicit but funnily enough possess an inexplicable grace, like that of a gazelle being chased by a ravenous lion.
There is no shame in this film...just truth.
Till next time...