Venice Film Festival 2011: Shame

Michael Fassbender is the actor who came from nowhere and, in three short years, seems to have gone everywhere. I first met him in San Sebastian after the screening there of Hunger in 2008, just days before he arrived on the set of Inglourious Basterds; I had no idea, having met many similarly promising actors who do years of penance in unseen and unreleased indie movies, that his time would come so swiftly, if indeed it would ever come at all. But this year has seen a trifecta of movies that perfectly showcase his talent. In X-Men: First Class, his ease in a big-budget blockbuster immediately led to whispers of Bond, should Daniel Craig ever put away the Walther PPK. Then at this festival alone there were two that couldn't have been more different. In David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method he proved he could do period, playing the buttoned-up, rather square Carl Jung, who, even though he sees himself as a bohemian, secretly knows that he's just a middle-class dropout who's rebelling against type. But in Steve McQueen's Shame he shows very definitely he can do 'now', playing a modern man whose lurid sex life masks a set of very deep and painful neuroses.

After the clipped English of Magneto and Jung, it's quite a shock to hear Fassbender speaking in his American accent, playing Brendan, a young businessman living alone in New York. Brendan is obsessed with sex and all aspects of it – the opening scenes show his pursuit of a married woman he spots on the subway. At first she is embarrassed, then flatttered, then awkward, then nervous. Brendan maintains his blank, seductive smile, and McQueen keeps his camera trained on the poor girl. For Brendan, these four seasons of emotion are part of the thrill of the hunt, and he closes in to seal the deal long after the girl's brief reciprocal interest has turned to mild panic. At home, Brendan romps with hookers and watches porn on the internet, but when he goes out with his brash, boorish boss David (the excellent James Badge Dale, from 24), he turns into a wallflower in the bigger man's shadow.

Brendan's routine is upset when his sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) comes to stay. Sissy is a club singer and a vintage clotheshorse who first appears leaving a string of increasingly irate phone messages for her brother. Brendan ignores them and one day comes home to find Sissy in his bathtub. She's an emotionally dysfunctional wreck, much like Brendan, but where Brendan keeps his outward appearance professional, Sissy lets it all show. We never get to see the partner who has apparently kicked her out, but it's clear from a phonecall that we and Brendan overhear that she's attracted to the wrong men, or, at a push, attracted to the right men but for all the wrong reasons.

In the run-up to Venice there was a sudden bit of back-pedalling from the makers of Shame to reposition it slightly, after the early publicity revealed that it would be about sex addiction. That particular tanker will be hard to turn round – Shame most definitely IS a film about sex addiction, with full-frontal nudity and explicit sex that will earn it a big fat 18 certificate when the BBFC claps eyes on it (although I seriously doubt that it will be cut). But I know what they're trying to say; McQueen's film is more about the desperate impulses that push Brendan to do what he does. By the end of the film, the sex scenes become more and more detached and impressionistic, an orgy of flesh without context that also becomes quite eye-poppingly graphic in the last act.

The film resolves itself in a surprisingly conventional way, one that slightly sells out the arty promise of the first hour but, commercially, this can only help sell the movie as a latter-day Alfie. Mulligan is convincingly tragic as the flakey Sissy, and her scenes with Fassbender do have an edge. Just what is it about Sissy that so gets to Brendan? It's a question that sits at the very heart of the film, and McQueen creates a disturbing mystery about it that transcends mere exposition. Metaphorically, Sissy holds up a mirror to Brendan and he hates what he sees there, but it's to McQueen's credit that he never really tells us why. In fact, the whole film is a triumph for McQueen. His use of music is a little self-important at times, but the performances, pacing and cinematography – especially on the streets and subways of Manhattan – are first rate. Expect this film to figure in a multitude of year-end best lists. And, more importantly, it is only a matter of time before Fassbender adds Oscar-winner, Bafta-winner and ruler of the world to his already impeccable CV. In Shame, he's literally showing us everything he's got. The future will show us what he can do with it...