Shame
User Score
7.8 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 130 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 112 out of 130
  2. Mixed: 15 out of 130
  3. Negative: 3 out of 130

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  1. CitizenCharlie
    Dec 18, 2011
    4
    Brandon Sullivan (Michael Fassbender) has an addiction. He does not struggle against it, seek therapy to cure it, or deny its existence; he learns to cope with it and attempts to shape his life around it to create routine and give it space. Brandon is addicted to sex but appears to be a bit more OCD about it than the regular sex addict looking to score at the club on a weekend. He has a handle on his issue enough to know specifically what he wants. This specificity is most likely his limiting factor when it comes to real life relationships and intimacy, but Brandonâ… Expand
  2. Reveala
    Jan 16, 2012
    4
    I admit it, the sluggish pace may have distracted me, but I didn't get the back story of the brother-sister. The main reason to see it is the frontal nudity of a soon-to-be major star, and the daring sex. But it is strangely clinical and unsexy, and sad, which I DO get is the point. Sigh.
  3. georgeblomme
    Jan 8, 2012
    3
    I wish I could give this movie a good rating. Its starts with a fairly handsome guy, nicely built in all proportions, who is a sex addict. Sometimes he gets what he wants (always friendly; this guy does not rape), but on other occasions he cannot produce. His sister lives with him, and she appears to be on the verge of suicide from Day One, making this film complicated and dark. The guy, who suddenly seems to have lost interest and or ability to perform sex, plus put up with the antics of his sister, walks endlessly through the night streets of Manhattan, or jogs and jogs, or rides half-filled, old newspaper-littered subway trains endlessly. These scenes where he's losing himself, or possibly trying to find a way out of sexual addiction go on and on -- making this 1-hour, 45-minute film seem like a 5-hour ride on a dirty subway train. There are good street shots of Manhattan, but at the now-famous Standard hotel on the High Line, they miss the opportunity to have the woman bracing herself against the picture glass picture windows while being pumped from behind - something that supposedly happens regularly in real life every night - much to the delight of High Line voyeurs. Why does the film shy away from the big window scenes - maybe a nod to hotel management's requests? Go see, but I think you may be disappointed too.… Expand
  4. roscoeswaffle
    Dec 4, 2011
    4
    Shame summarizes its own fundamental problem in Carey Mulligan's line, "We're not bad, we just come from a bad place." The bad place that Sissy and Brandon come from is where others have moved on to more au courant dysfunctions, while Brandon got left behind with a circa-1995 sex addiction and Sissy got left behind with the depression fostered by having a brother with a circa-1995 sex addiction. It's remotely possible that the movie might have made something interesting of this notion of being left behind - the unsexy out-of-dateness of Brandon's sex addiction - but Shame evinces a nearly absolute lack of self-awareness of the difficulties it brings upon itself by attempting to engage a topic that no longer has much cultural currency. There's a glimmer of promise when Brandon, on a date with his co-worker Marianne, asks her to feel a bump on the back of his head and explains, playfully, that he's a Neanderthal (and then goes on to describe the childhood mishap that actually produced the bump). It's worth noting that the exchange of dialogue in this scene is practically the only passage in the movie that doesn't feel oppressively contrived. A viewer who hasn't yet given up might suppose that Shame is finally pushing through to a recognition of Brandon as belonging to the wrong era: he has the misfortune to be the Neanderthal who survived the extinction of the culture's interest in sex addiction. All he's survived, though, in the constricted view that the movie is willing to allow itself, is a vaguely dysfunctional childhood in New Jersey. Curiously, the movie alludes ambiguously to a different (the same?) childhood in Ireland. The Irish childhood is another glimmer of promise; it suggests a whole other larger context, in which Brandon's struggles with himself derive from and are justified by a formative guilt-laden Irish Catholic upbringing (in Ireland, so much more guilt-laden than New Jersey can ever be). In this context, Brandon fits plausibly into the movie's frame because his origin is from outside the movie's setting. As a New Yorker with a sex addiction, he's an anachronism, but as an Irish immigrant, he's an outsider grappling with a plausible burden. But to make the Irish-immigrant narrative plausible, the movie would need to allow itself room to explore the larger context, and this is exactly what the movie rigorously declines to do.… Expand

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
72 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 41 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 29 out of 41
  2. Mixed: 10 out of 41
  3. Negative: 2 out of 41
  1. Tampa Bay Times
    Reviewed by: Steve Persall
    Feb 15, 2012
    50
    Shame smears the lines between daring and taunting, and art versus indulgence. When it ends there's the urge to take a shower, and not a cold one.
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  2. New Orleans Times-Picayune
    Reviewed by: Mike Scott
    Feb 3, 2012
    63
    It's easy to be interested in the characters' lives -- as tragic as they are -- but it's not nearly as easy to become emotionally invested in them.
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  3. St. Louis Post-Dispatch
    Reviewed by: Calvin Wilson
    Jan 20, 2012
    100
    The film is a raw, unsparing look at the downside of humanity.
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