9 Songs
Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll used to be a commercially surefire package that today seems less automatically reliable. Which is presumably why Michael Winterbottom’s 9 Songs arrives in Chicago 15 months after its Cannes premiere–during the dog days of summer, when art-house films that distributors aren’t quite sure what to do with tend to surface. Sex is the main course, the side dishes are nine concert performances given by rock bands, and the spices are a few glancing references to cocaine and prescription drugs.
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9 Songs is intermittently arousing, but though the sex is real, it isn’t really porn. Jonathan Romney offers a pretty precise description in the London Independent: “Essentially, 9 Songs bets us that it can make sex stand for all the other things that routinely convey character.” It’s a scriptless improv for two actors, one professional (Kieran O’Brien), one not (Margo Stilley), and whether what we’re watching when they’re getting it on qualifies as fiction or documentary is part of what keeps the film interesting.
Two BRMC songs played at the Brixton Academy–“Whatever Happened to My Rock ‘n’ Roll” and “Love Burns”–serve as bookends to the action. The remaining seven songs consist of bits of concerts Matt and Lisa attend over the course of their affair, at such venues as the Forum, the Hackney Empire, and the Hammersmith Apollo. The couple rarely moves outside the bedroom or the clubs, but a few breathers are provided by one glimpsed visit to the countryside and a pebbly beach and a few short forays to the kitchen.
