In New York City Brandon is dealing with sex addiction which sees his life spiralling out of control, even more when his younger sister Sissy turns up at his apartment one day.
I found this film quite difficult to watch because it felt like we should not have watched Brandon and some of the things he was doing or ended up doing due to his addiction. At first though I will admit that I was struggling to see how this film was about sex addiction, but it slowly comes out and we see the desperate things Brandon will do to get himself fulfilled. Sneaking into the toilets at work, high amounts of porn on his work computer, random women and even slipping into the world of men to be able to get relieved.
His sister Sissy seems to make him worse and they share some very strange scenes which I won’t really go into to much detail with that as a lot of things about their relationship aren’t clear and don’t really get answered during the film. Its certainly not a normal brother/sister relationship that is for sure! I have become quite a fan of Carey Mulligan and this role is slightly different to her other roles, a little bit more gritty and real compared to her previous roles of an innocent young girl.
It really is such a brilliant performance from Michael Fassbender who keeps you engaged and hoping that he can start to lead a more normal life. The film starts and ends with the same scene with a couple of differences. Leaves you guessing and able to make your own mind up about what happened next, I won’t spoil any of that though!
Sex addiction isn’t something I have given much thought, but I can imagine most people wondering what the problem with it is. This film helps to show that it can make you do things that you wouldn’t normally and that to get a small thrill towards your addiction you will pretty much do anything that you have to. In Brandon’s case in the film we see that he does not seem to be capable of having a normal relationship or more normal sex with someone he cares about.
Overall I think this film really does deliver such an important message on addiction and how it really can take over someones life and consume them so nothing else really seems to matter or take place, everything is based around the addiction. I can’t really say if this film gives a good picture of sex addiction as really haven’t heard much about it at all, but I guess that doesn’t really matter too much overall. I guess it has made me think about it a little bit after watching the film a couple of days ago now!
