I’ve decided to take a look at this film through two lenses (CAUSE IT’S A MOVIE SHOT WITH CAMERAS, GET IT???) – one will examine the story, characters, and my overall impressions of the film; the other includes my discussion with an MPAA rater over the reasoning behind the NC-17 rating.

Shame is a happy little tale of a well-endowed sex addict living in New York City. His sister derails his daily plans by showing up and living on his couch. Obviously they have a stressed relationship, but they’re family and deal. In the end, Brandon’s word is shook and, we assume, changed by a scary incident with his sister (spoiler: not incest).

I couldn’t tell you much more about the movie, not for spoilerific reasons, but because there wasn’t much too it. If we cut the scenes down to a sane length, Shame is nothing more than a 20 minute short film about an addict and his sister. Each incredibly un-sexy scene simply hammers home his addiction – prostitute, two prostitutes, weird back-alley sex, gay sex (oh, what a low!), more prostitutes, and, whoops! he can’t seem to perform when he actually might care about the woman. We get it, way to beat that theme in to the ground. There’s nothing more to Brandon’s character – he is addicted to sex, that’s all we ever find out.

Carey Mulligan, as usual, was embarrassingly bad. Watching her sob on the phone to her ex-boyfriend made me more uncomfortable than all the big-screen wang I saw the rest of the movie. I don’t think she, like Michael Fasbender, had a lot to work with just in terms of dialog, but what she got she squandered.

As short films go, Shame was pretty daring and good. As a feature, it never had a story or a point other than being artistically NC-17….which brings me to the second half to my review.

Although there was nudity, sexuality, etc, there was never anything that made me say WHOA, that was unexpected. Without being too crass, I’d say the usual bits that make a film NC-17 did not appear, so I’m not sure why it got the rating. Why wonder? The MPAA is here to answer all of our questions.

First call went something like this:

“Hello, MPAA, how can I help you?”

“I’d like to speak to a rater about the movie Shame.”

“Why do you want to do that?”

“Well, I was just wondering what made the film NC-17.”

“It’s rated NC-17 for explicit sexual content, what more you do you need to know? Have you SEEN the movie?”

She had a bit of a testy tone, so I explained that compared to other films, I didn’t see anything… uh.. anatomical that put it in NC-17 range and wondered if it was maybe duration or something a little more abstract. She said she would have someone call me.

Second call a few weeks later was death by hold.

Third call, just now, I was put on hold, then hung up on.

Well, I’ve got to get this review up, but it’s not over MPAA!  Not by a long shot!