FILM

Having scooped a shedload of gongs for ‘The King’s Speech’, Bristol-born producer Iain Canning’s next film’s all about the noticeably less regal world of sex addiction. Robin Askew is our man in the dirty raincoat.

So you've decided to make what's billed as the first serious film to tackle the controversial subject of 'sex addiction'. How do you get started? For director Steve McQueen, writer Abi Morgan and producer Iain Canning, the first stop was New York, where their film was to be set, to spend a week meeting a bunch of self-proclaimed sex addicts. Canning admits he was sceptical. "We went into it asking 'Is it real?' like a lot of people do. How much can sex dominate someone's life? We thought we'd be meeting the sleazy person in the big overcoat. But we ended up hearing the most depressing stories that we'd ever heard, about people using sex to basically destroy the rest of their lives. The alcoholic can be incredibly fun at the Christmas party when you're there for an hour, but it's not so nice when they get up in the morning and drink two bottles of vodka. It's the same with these stories. We found men – and women as well – who were totally afraid of intimacy and would end up becoming more and more disconnected from the world. So we came back thinking this is an area of modern life – partly, I think, because of the internet and access to porn – that hadn't been seen on film."

Bedminster's only Academy Award winner, Bristolian Iain Canning attended Bedminster Down school before departing for a Media Studies course at Cardiff University ("I got pretty much all my film education from the Arnolfini, Watershed and Chapter Arts in Cardiff"). Worming his way into the film industry as a runner, he wound up executive producing 'Control' and Steve McQueen's 'Hunger' before co-founding his own production company, See-Saw Films, back in 2008. See-Saw got off to a flying start with 'The King's Speech', whose commercial and critical success was capped with a mountain of awards. In March 2011, he stepped up with his co-producers to receive the Best Picture Oscar from Steven Spielberg, exciting the media by thanking his boyfriend as well as the starry cast.

It's safe to say that 'Shame', which reunites him with McQueen, is going to be a much tougher sell to notoriously conservative Academy voters. Written by busy Abi Morgan, who's also responsible for this month's 'The Iron Lady', the film stars Michael Fassbender as predatory sex addict Brandon and Carey Mulligan as his needy sibling Sissy. 'Shame' isn't explicit in the taboo-busting sense of depicting actual penetration, but there's no shortage of full-frontal nudity. "It's a film which has already surpassed our expectations in terms of audience reaction and critics' reactions," Canning insists. "So it's been a great ride so far. But in terms of what the link between those two films is, I think that both ['The King's Speech' director] Tom Hooper and Steve McQueen are incredibly exciting film-makers. As a producer, I like the way that you can go up and down in budget and you can go left to right in terms of subject matter if you really believe the film-maker is talented."

That belief has led to him touring 'Shame' round the country, with Q&A sessions after each screening. Meeting the audience immediately after they've seen your film must be an instructive and, perhaps, sobering experience for any film-maker. All the more so with a film like 'Shame'. "It's been a very interesting set of Q&As because people have had very visceral reactions to the film," he laughs, adding that he's been thoroughly enjoying the experience.

So what has been the most frequent topic of debate? "I think it's fair to say that, given the tabloidisation – if that's a word – of the idea of sex addiction, people do wonder how much sympathy we should have for someone who has an overactive sex life. For us, the film is more about the spectrum of need and wanting to take yourself out of your own life, or out of the present – whether that be through alcohol or over-eating or over-exercising. It just happened that in this story it's people who did that through sex."

What about the fact that we're told virtually nothing about the protagonists' backgrounds? Was there any suggestion at the script stage that more should be revealed about Brandon and Sissy's past? "There was. And that's the main debate circling round this film. There was a worry that this was the first film to really focus in on somebody whose life is controlled by sex. I think there can be an oversimplification of people who have problems in their lives. We'd heard so many different stories in our research phase that we didn't want to point the finger at one particular thing. Some people had no trigger in their childhood. They just really enjoyed pornography and it overtook everything. Secondly, we wanted the audience to come to the film in an open way, almost like joining a dinner party conversation or meeting up with friends where you don't know somebody."

One possible interpretation of 'Shame' is that it's a rather moralising film; one that even the Daily Mail might endorse, were it not for all the sex and nudity. The deleterious emotional effects of pornography and casual sex are depicted clearly. And when Brandon tries to make a human connection during a disastrous date, it seems that we are even being invited to pity him for seeing no point in marriage. Canning laughs when I suggest this and offers a spirited rebuttal. "If the film does have a moralistic tone, then I think the key one is that spending time with people that you love and care for is a really rewarding thing. I don't think it has a judgemental point of view on Brandon. There's a part of him that craved intimacy, but he just couldn't get there. I think that's the story we're telling."

The film boasts plenty of McQueen's favoured lengthy takes and tracking shots, the difference being that this time many of them are shot on the streets of Manhattan. With no budget to close these down, the crew had to shoot at 3am when there were fewer people about and ask them politely to keep out of the way. Most striking is the scene where Brandon goes for a lengthy late-night jog. "What I love about those shots is that it's almost like you're walking on a tightrope. There's that thrill of thinking when he was running, 'Great, we've got the eighth block!' It makes it more interesting. It was the third take, luckily. I was very happy when we got it."

And what of our old friend the censor? There was a big kerfuffle when 'The King's Speech' was landed with a 15 certificate for 'language', leading to it being downgraded to a 12A. "Yeah, I seem to end up at each end of the spectrum having problems with ratings," laughs Canning. "'Shame' was always going to be an 18 in the UK. The irony is that we ended up with a bidding war for the American rights when we thought we wouldn't even get a US distributor. The one thing I will say about the rating is that we live in a society where teenagers can quite easily access and look at pornography, and yet a drama based in research has a harder time getting to a similar audience – 16-18-year-olds – than that pornography does. I think the BBFC do a great job and an important job in giving certificates to films. However, there is a strange disconnect between the world at large and the world of cinema."

'SHAME' OPENED ON FRI 13 JAN. FOR REVIEW CLICK HERE.

Copyright Robin Askew 2011