British filmmaker Steve McQueen came to the attention of mainstream audiences with his Oscar-winning 12 Years A Slave, perhaps the first truly mainstream film to tackle the painful subject of slavery in America. Less well known than 12 Years A Slave - and arguably a superior film - is 2011's Shame, starring Michael Fassbender as a sex addict living in New York and struggling to overcome his urges whilst piecing together his dysfunctional family. Clearly not a subject likely to bait the Oscars anywhere near as much as McQueen's follow up film, an NC-17 rating in the US ensured that few people would get to see this minor masterpiece. Any film which tackles something as sordid as hypersexuality with such an unflinching eye is bound to remain something of a niche movie, but Shame deserves a far wider audience than it had. It's the best collaboration to date between Fassbender and McQueen, which is saying something, given how brilliantly the two worked together on both 12 Years A Slave and their first film, Hunger.
