Welcome to Screen Gems, our weekend dive into queer and queer-adjacent titles of the past that deserve a watch or a rewatch.
The Shocker: Shame
Michael Fassbender goes full monty and gives one of his best performances in this indie film from 2011. Fassbender stars as Brandon, a successful New York businessman who can never get enough sex. His daily life of bedding as many women as possible gets upended by the arrival of his sister, Sissy (Carey Mulligan), an emotionally unstable singer with whom Brandon has an uncomfortable relationship, to say the least.
Over the course of Sissy’s visit, Brandon continues to bed as many women as possible, though it becomes clear that he can only get aroused in casual encounters, never when he has an emotional connection to a partner. By the time he visits a gay club to have sex with a man, the hook-up feels less like sexual fulfillment than an act of pure desperation.
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Shame is one of the best films ever made about sex addiction–still a taboo subject, even within the queer community. For Brandon, sex has no emotional or erotic value; it’s simply a method of self-validation, and a means to numb deep emotional pain. Both Mulligan and Fassbender approach this material with total fearlessness to their extreme credit.
Apart from two towering performances, Shame proves that it takes more than a whole lot of sex to make a sexy movie.
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Preppy1000
Saw it when it came out and was not impressed. Fassbender was great and had a great body but the story went nowhere.
inbama
Good film, rated 79% on Rotten Tomatoes and nice penis.
keith89
I was disappointed watching this when Brandon’s lowest moment, his dark night of the soul (spoilers here) was him going to a gay bathhouse and receiving consensual oral sex from another man. As though that’s the worst thing ever? The title ‘Shame’ makes me feel more uncomfortable knowing that his shame was tied to eventually resorting to gay sex as his last option. But I know someone who loves this movie and I might be wrong about it – that’s okay 🙂 I’ll give it another shot sometime
sejjo
In a movie of about 100 mins, this scene lasts less than 2 mins. The shame of the title is the sex addiction, has nothing to do with sexual orientation and doesn’t matter the sex or gender of the person he’s having sex with. Your interpretation of this scene is very ungenerous to the writer/director and actor.
Onecaddy13
I have liked Michael Fassbender for many years. He comes from a family of actors and I think they’re all great. He never has a problem being naked for a scene as I’ve seen him nude in many films. Michael will always give a great performance in whatever he does, I haven’t seen the movie as yet, but I really don’t mind if it’s good or bad as long as he’s in it.
Oranos
I saw this in 2011, when it came out.
Extremely well acted, and Fassbender has scenes where he is fully frontally nude for 20 seconds at a time. That didn’t do anything for me as I was watching it as a film, but it WAS a tour de force. THE most excellent film on sex addiction in at least a decade.
Whoever was the host for the 2012 Academy Awards pointedly (and repeatedly) noted Fassbender’s dick size during the opening monologue, and the audience seemed to enjoy it. I didn’t see any faces in the audience looking uncomfortable, female OR male, as at the cameras panned thru the audience
.
And Carey Mulligan gave a bravado performance as Fassbender’s sister.