For the past few weeks, Movieline's own S.T. VanAirsdale has been listing Michael Fassbender as one of the top five front runners for next year's Best Actor Oscar for his work in Steve McQueen's* upcoming erotic drama Shame. Finally, a trailer for the acclaimed film has surfaced, giving evidence again for why Fassbender -- who played X-Men: First Class's Magneto -- is so worthy of your crushes, why he ran away with the Best Actor Award at this year's Venice Film Festival and why all of those early rave reviews for Shame were warranted.
*Not the Steve McQueen you're thinking of. This Steve McQueen is a British filmmaker responsible for the 2008 film Hunger.
Stephanie Zacharek, who saw the film in Venice this September, set up Shame's premise elegantly for Movieline:
Fassbender plays Brandon, a successful New York professional who suffers from sexual compulsive behavior. You might call him a sex addict if that term didn't conjure visions of David Duchovny and Charlie Sheen acting out like spoiled schoolyard kids, and what Brandon suffers is more peculiar and more painful. He has assignations with hookers; he initiates potential encounters with luscious strangers he sees on the subway; at work, he leaves his desk for the men's room, where he relieves his urges with joyless efficiency. His boss, David (James Badge Dale), is also something of a buddy -- the two troll city bars together, looking to pick up women, though the prattling David strikes out more often than he scores, while Brandon barely needs to arch an eyebrow. Even as David tries to glom onto Brandon's subterranean attractiveness, he also seems to be finding subtle ways to register his disgust with Brandon's beyond-healthy sex drive: Early in the movie, Brandon finds that his computer has been whisked away temporarily by the company's tech department. He knows -- and we know -- why.
Brandon's world is further shaken when his jazz singer sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) shows up, requesting a place to crash for a week or two. Her reappearance in Brandon's life forces him to deal with his own pain and self-hatred and to wage war on his own body.
The drama also stars James Badge Dale and Nicole Beharie and was filmed last spring in New York City.
Fassbender last worked with McQueen on Hunger, the BAFTA-winning feature about the 1981 Irish hunger strike. Shame, which was acquired by Fox Searchlight for approximately $400,000, will work its way into U.S. theaters December 2.
Read Zacharek's full write-up here.
[Guardian via CinemaBlend]