Shame

It's funny i normally watch a trailer before i watch the movie but i saw this on prime and just automatically saw the blurb and i took a chance i am so glad I did! An amazing cast, it was so real and brought such important struggles to life that girls and women and men struggle with on a daily basis i didn't expect that ending at all i was just left in shock and crying my eyes out, just fantastic!

An excellent and absorbing Australian drama made and released in 1987, SHAME featuring Deborah Lee Furness is a genuine surprise powerhouse thriller. She plays a lawyer having a solo motorbike riding holiday when to her alarm, she gets trapped in a misogynistic country town. Local louts see her as "fair game" and then find the tables turned when her legal talons return to jail them for their brute behavior. A great role for any woman SHAME is well played by the talented and tough Furness. Interesting teen actor Simone Buchanan seen in the wonderful kids movie RUN REBECCA RUN is a local girl also terrorized by the boys.It is a combination of events against town women that sees Furness take a very tough legal stand, making the Civic leaders and their boozy blokes world accountable for this social damage. Possibly inspired by news items and well directed by Steve Jodrell, a (later) TV-only director SHAME did not get a big release thus crippling its initial available audience. Not screened on TV or profiled much after 1989, SHAME might benefit from a remake if the dynamics of this small taut film were slightly enlarged. Furness is the happy wife of Broadway performer and cinema X Man Hugh Jackman which is possibly why she is not seen on screens very often anymore.. A DVD release for SHAME is long overdue. A remake is also welcome. It is a good story and great pieces for strong unknown new actors. Other Australian films as strong similar references are THE BOYS and THE CARS THAT ATE Paris.

Powerful but restrained acting highlights this story of a lawyer who happens upon a family whose daughter has been blamed for her own gangrape, on the old theory that she must have asked for it. The characters gradually and quite believably overcome their natural tendencies toward denial and passivity in the face of overwhelming circumstances. There is a refreshing absence of crusading spirit and rhetoric such as you usually get in films dealing with themes of this kind. Rather, quiet, inner heroism emerges quite naturally from the various characters as they deal with the specific problems that have come upon them. Beautifully done, wonderfully and subtly acted. Watch it.

Not the Ingmar Bergman or Michael Fassbender films of the same title, this Australian drama focuses a female lawyer who decides to stay overnight in an unfriendly rural town while her motorcycle is fixed. Concerned about the apparent lawlessness in the town with an ineffectual police sergeant in charge, her stay soon becomes longer as she tries to convince a local teenager to speak out against those who have wronged her, leading to division and unease in the sleepy town. The messages at hand are hardly subtle and the pro-feminist angle is certainly nothing new, however, the film gets good mileage from its portrait of a town so cut off from the world that they believe themselves to be beyond the law, instead deciding their own regulations and ideas of right and wrong. When she is almost assaulted at night, the lawyer is told to simply "stay off the street" at night despite her protests that "I am a citizen; I have every right to do what I chose", while "these things happen" is the attitude of one local woman, dismissive of the charges that the lawyer wants her teen client to bring. A more interesting film may have probed into whether the lawyer created more harm than good by opening up a can of worms in regards to lawlessness in the town, but the film makes for decent viewing either way with Deborra-Lee Furness and Simone Buchanan both in fine form as the main female characters. While more eerie nighttime shots would have helped, the film is nicely photographed too on-location in Toodyay - less than an hour away from where I currently reside.

I always wondered if the film title was in homage of the 50's movie classic, since Shame's story line of the outsider showing up, fighting wrongs, and ultimately, helping a community get back their self-respect seems to have the same themes. This movie was re-made as a 1992 made for TV movie with Amanda Donahoe as the lead character and the locale changed to be the Pacific Northwest of the US rather than the outback of Australia. The theatrical film is the more powerful of the two. If you like this film, you might also enjoy the 1996 movie "Foxfire," where a teenage Angelina Jolie is cast as the trouble-making outsider showing up to help right wrongs.