I ranked this movie about a Manhattan sex addict as one of the best twenty I saw last year, and that might have been too generous, but I still think it’s worth watching (as long as you’re not with your parents).
What Works: Carey Mulligan–too often Michelle Williams’s sleep walking sister–gives the most alive performance of her career as Brandon (the sex addict’s) emotionally needy sister. They never mention exactly what happened to make these two the way they are, but we can guess something traumatic in childhood made Michael Fassbender emotionally unavailable and his sister starving for emotional connection. And Fassbender himself gives a performance that should get him an Oscar nomination as a sex addict trying to keep everything about the surface while real life wants to get under it. And the (non)-sex scene between him and the luminous Nicole Behari is the hottest of last year, even if it ends in a whimper because Brandon can’t get into it with a woman he sees as more than just a sex object. The miserable look on Fassbender’s face in the very final moment of the movie (quite a journey from the post-orgasm face he has during the film’s very first moment) makes you see the very real cost of his seemingly “great, uncomplicated” lifestyle.
What Doesn’t Work: The biggest complaint critics have had about this movie is that it’s only skin deep and a little too shallow, and I definitely understand that but I think that’s a metaphor for the way a sex addict lives. The movie glides along on a gorgeous surface–where NYC grime is always right underneath–because that’s what a sex addict tries to do, shutting down anything that isn’t viscerally pleasurable.
What I Would Have Done Differently: I do think that the movie works a little too hard at keeping the audience at a distance, and even though I understand why the filmmaker chose that route, metaphors aren’t always as satisfying as situations we fully understand. Still, it’s hard to really take a dump on such a fresh movie when directly below this review is New Year’s Eve and directly above it is The Darkest Hour. I shouldn’t be so picky when it comes to good things or they’ll stop making good things entirely.