Feb. 08, 2012 - Issue #851: Jon Mick

Shame

Director Steve McQueen on sex addition, NC-17 and a 'huge hypocrisy'

We meet Brandon (Michael Fassbender) staring up at his ceiling, naked save a thin bed sheet, blank expression masking his thoughts. there's a coldness to the image that rarely lifts, if it ever does: a promising young businessman at some nameless organization, Brandon's life is carefully controlled with one vice: an egregious, unappeasable addiction to sex, which he never seems to even remotely enjoy. And when his damaged but far livlier sister starts living on his couch, that careful façade starts to crumble, and the man enters a freefall into his addiction.

Shame is a film that's devoted to its conviction to portray a stark, unforgiving disease in a stark, unforgiving way. And despite Fassbender's slow-burner performance, director Steve McQueen's overall vision—assisted by co-writer Abi Morgan—seems almost too icy in its execution: we see the problem very vividly, but get little of cause, or cure: we're simply given a long-look at an uncomfortable issue that rarely gets a glance. There's al ot of merit to that idea, but without much in the way of warmth, that can be difficult to take in. Shame never flinches, but watching it, you probably will.

McQueen took a call with Vue during a press day back in December. One of the first things he asked about was the early reception to the film in Canada. It seemed like he was expecting criticism, though the movie's been met with pretty widespread praise. McQueen seems well aware that his work is far from everyone's cup of tea, but it's not something he seems to dwell on.

VUE WEEKLY: Do you wonder if there's going to be a backlash to one of your films before it comes out?
STEVE MCQUEEN: I do. But I think that with everything, and understandably so. That just happens. It happened with Hunger, absolutely. It happened with Shame; it's one of those things where, someone says yay, someone says nay. That's fine. Sometimes the nays are interesting, so I embrace it all.

VW: What drew you to exploring Shame's ideas of sexuality?
SM: It's one of those things y'know where ... what drew me to Hunger was [that it was] one of these things that's been swept under the carpet. This is a thing that no one ever spoke about. I mean, a lot of reviewers, for example, still don't believe—a lot of people in general don't believe—there's such a thing as sexual addiction, that this is different from being promiscuous. This is not a want, that's a actual need, a necessity, it's the kind of situation where, y'know, you get people locked in a room for 72 hours looking at pornography and masturbating for those 72 hours, or going on a sexcapade. It's a serious condition that people are not taking seriously.

VW: Do you feel the NC-17 rating Shame's been given in America drives that point home, in a way?
SM: Absolutely. I mean, again, the shame of sex. It's kind of weird. It's totally old fashioned. Violence is not seen as shameful at all, but I've never held a gun in my hand and never shot somebody in the head, but that is deemed as being normal within the distribution of the films in the United States, meaning it will not get an NC-17. But some two people having sex, which the majority of people do, not shooting and killing each other, that is deemed as being unseemly, and thus is given the NC-17 rating. It's very strange.
 

VW: In talking to people with sexual addiction, did anything surprise you?
SM: Everything. I mean, because again, I was one of those people who maybe laughed at the idea of sexual addiction in the beginning. But then you find out the real depths of what can happen, and you start questioning everything around you. You start questioning so many things. It's a real situation, one which is sort of, because of the Internet, more than anything else, is becoming an epidemic. And the character of Brandon is an archetype of a sex addict: he's controlling his environment, he's a young guy. And he uses his income to facilitate his addiction, which is sex.
 

VW: Why Shame, and not something like guilt? What do you see as the difference between the two?
SM: The fact of the matter is that  ... in interviewing people, myself and Abbey, this word, shame, kept coming up again and again. When it came out of their sort of sexual escapades, they'd feel this self-loathing and hate and shame for what they did. And when they recovered ... they would go on a binge again. So it was one of those translucent moments where they just felt real shame. Like when you have a situation where people aren't taking sex seriously, it's because there's a shame there. It's a very strange thing, where people are ashamed of sex and everyone does it. It's a huge hypocrisy. vueweekly.com comments: powered by Disqus