UK Release: Nine Songs

[SAI]

Nine Songs
Dir: Michael Winterbottom
Cast: Kieran O'Brien, Margo Stilley

Michael Winterbottom's new film is a relationship drama which charts the year long romance of Matt (O'Brien) and Lisa (Stilley) almost exclusively through two events: sex and concerts.
Bill Hicks once noted that the supreme court of the United States defines pornography as something 'without artistic merit which causes sexual thought'. This makes those who have decried Nine Songs as pornography legally wrong. Twice.
For a film so occupied with sex (about 35 of its 69 minutes are explicit scenes, occasionally hardcore in content, of sex) Nine Songs is curiously unsexy. It's almost distancing, after the initial shock value watching sex that, while artfully and beautifully shot by Winterbottom, is actually peretty ordinary. And that's the interesting thing about the sex scenes, they may not be arousing but, more than any porn, they feel real, like sex you or I might have and so they are at once a strength and a weakness of the film.
The biggest problem with the film is that the structure works so totally to the exclusion of character that Matt and Lisa could really be anyone, niether develops much of a personality and the film needs to be longer so that the actors (O'Brien in particular, who is rather good) can develop their characters more.
What works best though is the music. The selection of bands is peerlessly cool and all are on form in the footage we get, which ranges from the Von Bondies ripping through C'mon, C'mon to Michael Nyman playing a gorgeous concert. The film from Brixton Academy conveys the feeling of a gig better than any other film, it's messy, people get in the way, you can't always see the band, but it's still brilliant.
There's enough in Nine Songs that is interesting and well carried off to recommend it (though, clearly, it's not for everyone) but it's far from Winterbottom's best work, which is a shame as one gets the sense that if the running time were longer, and thus not just a gag, it would be up there with his magnificent Jude.

3/5

[MadsenOMC]

Michael Winterbottom is one of my favorite directors of all-time. It sounds like this doesn't compare with his best work, which is unfortunate, but I look forward to seeing it anyway and have high hopes for his adaptation of Tristram Shandy (apparently called A Cock and Bull Story now).

[Fisting Ackbar]

Originally posted by SAI
of its 69 minutes

Speaking of puns, I wonder if this was intentional...

I'll check this out at some point, I have a way of doing that with these kind of controversial graphic movies, whether they're supposively good or not.

[Lazy Boy]

I like Winterbottom's work -- 24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE and CODE 46 are especially watchable. This sounds interesting, but word is mixed.

[EoghainFOKeeffe]

I'm surprised there isn't more discussion about this movie on the JoBlo message boards. Considering the amount of press it has been getting and the fact that it's the first truly explicit sexual movie to be released in mainstream cinemas, I would think there would be at least SOME discussion! maybe it's because it's not being released in the US until July (and, even then, it's a limited release)...but what about all the UK members of the JoBlo boards?

Anyway, I approached this movie with an unprejudiced eye. I've seen a few reviews (just skimmed them) where the reviwers declare that it's not 'erotic' that it's 'boring' that it doesn't have any point and that the acting is terrible. And I wondered if this tell sus more about the movie, or about the reviewers.

The last point (about the acting) is true. It's painfully apparent that most of the dialogue was adlibbed and not very imaginatively either. But the dialogue is minimal and this is a film about sex. It's unapologetically about sex. And I don't have a problem with that. The story of the relationship is told in the way the two characters approach sex.

I've head the criticism that the sex scenes are interchangeable. I don't agree. A lot of truth comes out in these scenes. I won't spoil the story by using examples but the balance of power changes subtly over the course of the movie, and the emotional distance betwee the characters is evident in each sex scene.

It's an interesting (and mostly successful) experiment. A love story stripped down to it's carnal basics. And I don't care what the critics say - it IS erotic and it feel very real.