UK/2011/100mins/18. Dir: Steve McQueen. With Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan.
Brandon is in his thirties, living and working in New York. Born in Ireland but raised in the US he has his own flat and a job in a glossy corporate office. He’s single, smart and attractive but with a compulsive sexual need that sees him caught up in a repetitive cycle of pick-ups, prostitutes and online encounters. His world seems selfcontained and ordered until his wayward younger sister Sissy arrives at his apartment and Brandon’s control starts to slip. Steve McQueen (Hunger) has made a confident and complex film about the nature of need and desire and both Fassbender and Mulligan are perfect as people whose near-obsessive behaviours hint at some hidden past.