Shame (Steve McQueen, 2011)

Michael Fassbender only just exploded on the international scene a few years ago, but to see him in Shame, one half expects him to keel over any second. After coming to everyone's attention as the physically emaciated IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands in Steve McQueen's debut Hunger, Fassbender re-teams with the director to play a spiritually hollowed figure. The soullessness of sex addict Brandon pokes through the actor's buff frame, turning his pale flesh gray, his lined face turned skeletal with self-consuming lust. It is a deeply unsettling performance, one that uses Fassbender's attractive physicality and body language against itself to make every seductive pose more predatory than smoldering.

McQueen and editor Joe Walker establish the prison Brandon has erected around himself with a circular opening defined by the harsh sounds of a light switch turned on after nights of carnal pleasures, the disgusted whipping back of blinds to let in the light of the world from which Brandon hides, and the grinding subway train where he scopes out potential conquests on his way to work. As he hungrily gazes upon a married woman who struggles vainly against his devilish spell, the audience sees Brandon's routine of sex, be it hiring prostitutes, watching Internet porn or masturbating at work. So effective is the opening that mere wisps of recurring images—such as the bathroom door at work—instantly trigger graphic memories. But that closed-loop cutting only locks the film itself into the icy bourgeois surroundings of its protagonist, allowing McQueen to show off without having to do anything with his technical skill.