Naughty, Naughty: Carey Mulligan's Nude in Shame, Too

I'm feeling a little bad for Carey. After seeing Shame, all the fuss seemed to be about her co-star Michael Fassbender baring his junk, swinging the thing like a patrolman with a billy club.

But what about Carey? What about her needs? What about her risks?

Mulligan's character makes her entrance stark naked, in a shower stall, bare-breasted (they're perky!), bottle-blond hair soaked to reveal dark roots, darkish pubic hair. This is not your BBC Mulligan, nor the mother on the pedestal of Drive. Not only does she dress and sing like Marilyn Monroe, she has that bruised blond Bus Stop attitude, the beauty of the butterfly about to be stomped by the steel-toed boot of male brutishness.

Full-frontal nudity is a rite of passage for actresses. And so Mulligan's Sissy enters the frame, like brother Brandon, naked as birth, but not nearly so daring.

And, yet, Sissy may as well be clothed for all that is revealed about her character, despite her physical nudity, her painfully slow rendition of "New York, New York," and what definitely amounts to a genuine and wrenching performance. Again, it's the Jessica Rabbit problem: "she's not bad; she's just drawn that way."

Mulligan's abused, possibly incestuous, self-mutilating sister has a character arc that goes from bad to worse. She's just a plot punching bag. While she shares the screen with Fassbender's Brandon, it's her impact on him that commands director Steve McQueen's full attention, as if he were the parent who only has enough love for one child.

And, stripped bare, what's Brandon's takeaway? To quote Babs, "people, people who need people, are the luckiest people in the world."

 

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Comments

[Beaty Nicole Richardson]

09:22 PM on 11/28/2011

Because it's less common to see men full-frontal in the industry than it is to see women...

[Film Shark]

06:53 AM on 10/28/2011

I doubt a movie about sexual addiction would be authentic without some nude scenes. Nudity in film, if done discreetly, adds artistic merit to certain stories.

[wanglog]

06:05 AM on 10/28/2011

i'm psyched! carey mulligan is the hottest actress out there these days.

[liberalgirl31]

10:44 PM on 10/27/2011

Janet Leigh, Audrey Hepburn, and Grace Kelly had class and didn't need to appear naked to get attention for themselves.

[NHBill]

02:40 AM on 10/28/2011

What decade are you actually living in?
(By the way, if you analyse the Psycho shower scene frame by frame ole Janet is indeed nude.)

[LMPE]

06:59 PM on 10/27/2011

I always say that it's too bad that we never got to see actresses like Janet Leigh, Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly nude. And before you act as if it's trashy to appear naked onscreen, remember that

Alan Bates
Oliver Reed
Paula Prentiss
Malcolm McDowell
Donald Sutherland
Julie Christie
Ann-Margret
Sharon Stone
Kevin Bacon
Bob Hoskins
Sacha Baron-Cohen

have all shown their junk onscreen. I don't hear anyone calling them trashy, and I sure don't consider them such.