9 Songs

I had read some reviews and comments from the Director before seeing "Nine Songs" so I had adapted my viewing mode accordingly. I armed myself with the kind of cold, intellectualized, high-culture glasses one uses to see relevant contemporary art. Most of the times it won't be neither an esthetically satisfactory experience nor a necessarily pleasant emotional experience but if we can see the point of the artist and if that point seems in resonance with one's curiosity and awareness of the world around, that will be good enough. From that somewhat minimalist expectations' level viewpoint, "Nine Songs" did the trick. I can see Michael Winterbottom's point. Why can a writer engage in sexual imagery with no restrictions and a film author can't do the same? There is also, I think, a honest experimental tone in all that. Something like "Let's see if it works to ask the actors to go all the way. Let's see if we can stay inside serious film making and not add an item to the increasingly inflated porn film list." I think MW managed to sail through. Yes, it can be done (but, at what a price for the actors it remains to be seen); yes, it's definitely miles away from porn. As to if this incursion into real sex in the picture is as effective as explicit sex in literature, I'm afraid that MW is no Houellebecq. Sex in the daring novels of Houllebecq retain a kind of legitimacy because in the center of the plot there is a couple where love between the two is expressing itself (although fed by some rather non-conventional sexual behavior). Sex in Sade or in other libertine writers was deliberately tabu-breaking, and liberating in a way. The extremely good quality of the writing (both in Houellebecq and Sade) is a crucial element in allowing the authors who engage in such edgy fields to get away with it. In "Nine Songs" the couple fails to touch us, there is no love there (not even the good chemistry of sexual love), and the "writing" in film terms is not that impressive. It resembles more a documentary, which in fact it is ("How to introduce explicit live sex in mainstream cinema"). We end up leaving the screening room with the frustrating sense that an opportunity was lost. Like a piece of rather cold contemporary art it challenges you, it makes you engage in argument with your friends, it makes you wish to write a comment on web site. But we enjoy good cinema, not merely relate to.Enjoyment is not there.

When I saw Scorsese's "Last Waltz," I thought that I would never again see a concert film as true. And I haven't, until now.

The Band were the last popular musicians to tell stories, have nearly all those stories be in the third person and tell them without irony. To do this is impossible today, or at least non- commercial. Scorsese is a flawed filmmaker, his flaw being that he is overly invested in character-driven storytelling. The two: Band and Marty, were a perfect mix: cinematic rock. Pure, without that nightmare stew of MTV videos.

Now along comes Winterbottom. Nearly all viewers will be unable to accept a movie with sex in it as anything but a movie about sex. Shame on them. Confront it folks. That's his point: why is it so difficult to accept the difference?

But the hangups of the viewing public are less interesting to me than the way he constructed this experiment. It is a rock concert (with a Nyman interlude). Nine songs, with us participating in the songs themselves, participating in the going to the concerts to listen to the songs, and participating in the experience that the songs are about: namely obsessive sex. And also, remembering (or even inventing the memory of) the sex, drugs and rock and roll we've seen. This latter is done by our hero in Antarctica. He serves as narrator, by the way.

Thankfully, this intense sex avoids the theatrics of "Damage," and works to be as genuine as possible emotionally.

Is it a good movie? Could it change your life? Will it change cinema forever?

Probably yes.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

This film is yet another example of Michael Winterbottom's versatility. One peculiar aspect of it is that the scenes of lovemaking are divided by songs (hence the title). The film is only a little over 60 minutes so we get 30 minutes of music and 30 minutes of sex. It's fairly gentle, loving sex, with a short foray into mild bondage at the end, but it is indisputably real sex. There is a rather wistful atmosphere because with the opening scenes of a light plane flying low over the Antarctic wastes it is clear that Matt (Kieran O'Brien) is reflecting on the past, on his short affair with Lisa, a younger American woman in London. Matt is a glaciologist who spends his time uncovering the secrets of the earth's past. Lisa's background is not sketched in. In fact we learn little about her except that she does rather like sex and doesn't have to fall hopelessly in love with someone to enjoy their body. Matt is left only with a few warm memories.

The 9 songs are mostly noisy rock numbers from bands playing in the cavernous Brixton Academy, though there is at least one decent Michael Nyman number. It seems Matt and Lisa both like the stuff (they first meet there) and the songs kind of punctuate the relationship, but again, there is not a great deal of meaning.

Matt is played by Kieran O'Brien, previously seen as Fitz's difficult teenage son in "Cracker", and he certainly meets the physical demands his role requires. Margo Stilley as Lisa plays her in an uncomplicated fashion. I thought they were both pretty brave to do this and I hope it doesn't hurt their careers. It was something of an achievement to get this film past the censors but it clearly falls into the "Art" rather than "Pornography" category. I do wonder though, as I did with "Shortbus," what's coming next. I don't think, even in adult love stories I want to see all the anatomical detail. I'd much rather have some crackling dialogue or even just some nice scenery.

Saw this 16-09-2004 at the TIFF... While I am an admitted fan of mainstream films that feature explicit sexuality, I was disappointed in this film -- as it stands now. I say "as it stands now" because, although I may be wrong, the film has the feel of an unfinished work. Clocking in at a mere hour and five minutes, however, it still manages to feel long somehow -- essentially, we are watching either one of four types of scene: The lead actor reminiscing about the now-ended affair (from his walking trip of... Antarctica!), the couple attending concerts (always, apparently, at the same venue), the couple cooking and eating, or the couple having sex. There is relatively little dialog. The film feels fragmentary, as the scenes tend to repeat without much of a contextual base; perhaps these scenes are intended to represent the lead characters' memories, implying that we only remember those things that were most important to us from a relationship. The actors are game in their roles, although Ms. Stilley -- who has the long-limbed, small-chested appearance of a runway model -- comes off a bit weaker next to Mr. O'Brien (indeed, this appears to be her first film). I give both actors a lot of credit for baring themselves so unabashedly to the material, but am a bit disappointed that, even though Ms. Stilley has supposedly been offered another role in Mr. Winterbottom's next film, she is said to be "distancing herself" from this picture, apparently especially after her mother in North Carolina was alerted to its graphic nature.

In the (admittedly unlikely) eventuality that someone wandered into a cinema expecting this to be a musical, a rude shock would ensue, since this is the most sexually explicit mainstream film ever exhibited in Britain. Indeed the only mainstream movie I've previously seen to compare in explicitness was the 1976 Japanese work "Ai No Corrida" ("In the Realm Of The Senses"), but this work goes further with a scene of ejaculation, as well as fellatio, cunnilingus and penetrative sex. Since this is the work of accomplished British director Michael Winterbottom ("In This World"), one cannot possibly regard this is as pornography - besides anything else, porn features far more voluptuous women and portrays the sex from an exclusively male point of view, whereas the sex here is realistic (as well as real) and as female-oriented as much as male.

The problem is that the film appears to be utterly meaningless. A British research geologist Matt (Kieran O'Brien) goes to London gigs and has sex with American student Lisa (Margot Stilley), but there is no characterisation or plot or even a script (the dialogue was improvised and is banal). Even the music seems to bear no relationship to the lovers and - except for some haunting work from Michael Nyman - is dreary gunge. Shot on low budget digital video, the picture is as grey as the subject matter and the only light-hearted aspect is the rather unsubtle joke of the (mercifully short) running time (69 minutes). Come again? No chance.