Shame

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.

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.

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!

Wasn't sure going into this whether it would be a good film or not. I was leaning to the latter.

I just don't remember anything about it when it came out (I would of been 16) and not really the type of movie I would of been into at the time.

But very glad I have finally seen it now....well worth watching.

Very realistic of some Australian country towns of the time where women/girls were treated this way.

I was surprised at how good this film actually is.

I thought the acting was good and Deborah Lee Furness and Simone Buchanan were great.

A very moving film especially if you have a young daughter.

I was surprised at how good this film actually was.....wish I'd watched it sooner!

Dated, big hair, blurry, bad writing & screenplay, poor acting, sophomoric messaging & stereotyping, probably an insult to Outback residents. A feminist message cures all film ills? I don't think so. A shame that this film was made and a shame it was rated so highly. A shame I wasted my time.