Movie Box Review

Although Fox Searchlight didn't actually acquire Steve McQueen's film Shame until last Saturday, in a sense the marketing campaign for the film began when the producers made it clear that the film would not be edited for US release, and would be distributed with an NC-17 rating. This quickly became the most memorable fact about the film, and will lead to some disappointed audiences when it opens in December. Not because there's a lack of sex in Shame--there's plenty, although none of it is remotely hardcore--but because the film isn't at al interested in eroticism. Instead, it's a deadly serious account of a man drowning in his need for emotionless sex.

Brandon (Michael Fassbender) is an executive at a blank-faced NY firm, and he's good at his job, but really all he cares about are those moments when he can lose himself in sex. Specifically, in anonymous sex, with hookers or one-night-stands. (When he can't actually have sex, he watches pornography.) He's not a man who has relationships and then cheats; he wants no part--and indeed cannot function--in any relationship that requires feeling for the other party. He's not a rapist or a serial killer--it's all completely consensual--but in the sheer inhumanity and compulsion of his act, and his mix of lust and self-disgust, he seems similarly disturbed

Apart from his obsession, Brandon keeps every other part of his life under strict control--if anything, he's obsessively tidy. His sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) is the reverse, a mess in every sense of the word. Sissy, a jazz singer, makes clutter wherever she goes: she's clingy where Brandon is aloof; she longs for emotional connection while he repels it. When she shows up in NY and insists on staying in his apartment, he can't stand it. (There's a suggestion of something unsavory in their shared past.)

The film comes to center on their relationship, or lack thereof, and McQueen is unsparing. He gets extraordinary performances from his two stars. McQueen and Fassbinder had worked together on McQueen's first film as a director, Hunger, and in a very different way, Fassbinder's work is just as remarkable here. Brandon the Sex Addict could easily have been a joke, but Fassbinder's combination of fury, charm and repressed revulsion is riveting. We've never seen Mulligan give a performance like this before--she's a roiling mix of emotions, teetering over an abyss. (She's so good she even survives McQueen putting her through a dirge-like performance of "New York, New York" that seems to go on longer than the original movie.)

McQueen began as a visual artist, and his compositions (photography by Sean Bobbitt) are remarkable. They're often played out at great length, as McQueen favors having the script he wrote with Abi Morgan (writer of TV's terrific The Hour), and then extemporized upon by the actors, performed in lengthy shots, with little editing. His use of music is also impeccable, and often makes use, Kubrick-like, of preexisting music.

Shame will be taken by many as a slow, cold, bleak walk on the wild side, and that NC-17 won't work for long at the boxoffice. For some, though, it will be one of the year's major films, and exciting proof that the director and his stars are among the most revelatory talents in film today.

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DRIVE is a self-conscious genre movie, and those are tricky propositions.  On the one hand, you need to make your existential or other textual statement with all the artistry at your command; on the other, you still have to fulfill the demands of the genre you've chosen.  If you do it right, you have Heat; make a mistake and you've got The Driver.  Nicolas Winding Refn has for the most part made smart decisions, and the result is an exciting, moody thriller graced with an exceptional cast and some high-caliber moviemaking.

Taking a cue from The Driver, the protagonist of Drive has no given name, and is credited merely as "Driver."  (Walter Hill's picture pushed the pretention farther, with hardly any of the characters having names.)  Ryan Gosling, continuing to find a sweet spot between commercial vehicles (so to speak) and art-house cinema, plays a man with overlapping jobs:  he's a movie stunt-driver, an auto mechanic and a getaway driver for heists.  (In all 3 professions, he works with Shannon, played by Bryan Cranston.)  As a getaway man, he insists on strict rules:  he has nothing to do with the robbery itself, but provides the crooks with a window of exactly 5 minutes.  If they're in his car with the loot within that window, he guarantees they'll get where they want to go; any earlier or later, and he's gone. 

Our hero is reticent (of course), but immensely loyal, and he lets Shannon talk him into a plan to work together on a NASCAR auto, for which he'll be the driver.  This requires capital, however, which brings them into the orbit of gangster Bernie Rose (Albert Brooks) and his partner Nino (Ron Perlman).  As one may easily imagine, no good can come of this.  Meanwhile, he's also met his neighbor down the hall, Irene (Carey Mulligan) and her young son Benicio (Kaden Leos).  The three become close, but then Irene's husband Standard (Oscar Isaac) is released from prison, which starts the plot rolling and the characters dying.  Inevitably, things boil down to the Driver facing off against those who threaten the people he cares about. 

Refn directed the Danish Pusher trilogy, as well as the prison drama Bronson, so he's not a newcomer to the melding of thrills with character and theme.  Working from a spare script by Hossein Amini (from the novel by James Sallis), Refn works the genre conventions--the heist gone bad, the chases, the double-crosses that become triple, the killings that have to happen because a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do--with style and speed, and no compunction about mixing aesthetically composed chase sequences with sudden, bloody and brutal violence.  The gorgeous LA photography is by Newton Thomas Sigel, whose films include 3 Kings and The Usual Suspects, and the swift, lucid editing is by Mat Newman, a Refn veteran.  Also notable is the score by Cliff Martinez, a regular member of Steven Soderbergh's team. 

This side of Michael Mann, rarely do genre efforts draw this kind of cast. Gosling's streak of quality movies continues, and in what easily could have been a rote Man-With-No-Name kind of role, he brings humanity and a believably heartfelt wish to avoid the violence he wreaks.  Mulligan has perfected the heartfelt yearning she conveyed in An Education and Never Let Me Go; her part here is thin, but she fills it with emotion.  Probably the movie's biggest surprise is Albert Brooks--he did a jokey convict role in Out of Sight, but here he's utterly convincing as an aging gangster who's wearily willing to handle the dirty work himself.  Perlman, Isaac, Cranston and Christina Hendricks all contribute tasty supporting bits.

It's difficult to sell a movie like Drive, because even great reviews can drive the genre fans away, while promos that center on car chases and shoot-outs may not appeal to the art film crowd.  Gosling, although one of the fastest-rising actors around, has yet to prove that his name can open a movie on its own.  However it does at the box office, however, Drive is a superior example of having your genre and deconstructing it too.