ALLAN HUNTER at the Movies.

9 SONGS is already guaranteed a degree of notoriety as the most sexually explicit mainstream film ever released in British cinemas.

Highly respected director Michael Winterbottom portrays the arc of a love affair purely through the graphic sexual encounters of a young couple. Interludes are provided by the concerts they attend at the Brixton Academy where the performers range from Scottish band Franz Ferdinand to Michael Nyman on his 60th birthday.

This is very much experimental cinema, from the low-budget aesthetic to the minimal amounts of improvised dialogue and the murky, claustrophobic bedroom encounters. We learn little about Matt (Kieran O’Brien) and Lisa (Margo Stilley) other than what is revealed during sex, which is shown in such matter-of-fact detail that it leaves every other film looking coy.
 
Heading towards the bleak white wastelands of Antarctica, it is Matt who recalls his love affair with Lisa from their first meeting at a concert to an awkward farewell that leaves it uncertain whether they will ever meet again.
  
Increasingly adventurous in their love-making, it is left to the audience to divine the state of their relationship as tenderness bleeds away to indifference. An interest in bondage may be a reflection of their increasing confidence in each other or a means of trying to retain some spark in a relationship that is already starting to fade.
 
Although marked by full frontal nudity, cunnilingus, fellatio, penetration and ejaculation, 9 Songs is explicit without ever being erotic. We know so little about the two characters that we don’t have an emotional investment in their physical acts. Ultimately, you admire the bravery of the actors, but are underwhelmed by the film itself.

9 SONGS
General release, selected cinemas
Director: Michael Winterbottom
Stars: Kieran O’Brien, Margo Stilley
Certificate: 18
Running time: 69 mins
Country: UK
Year: 2004
 

© Allan Hunter, 2005