9 Songs

 

 

Michael Winterbottom’s 9 Songs is a sexual experience from near enough its first frame. The film’s premise is incredibly straightforward – Matt (Kieran O’Brien) and Lisa (Margo Stilley) meet at a concert, and 9 Songs is essentially an expression of their love story, which just so happens to rather loosely revolve around music.

From the outset, we must consider where the line between glamourised pornography and artistic sexual expression is drawn, and furthermore, whether Winterbottom’s film is able to transcend this line. A number of the film’s sex scenes are unsimulated, which has been a high point of contention for the filmmakers actually attempting to tender a release for the film. Genitals, both male and female, are in full display, and while it is in a sense refreshing, the film is sure to alienate and embarrass the more body-conscious viewers among us.

Initially, 9 Songs appears to follow the format of a presentation of seemingly sage information about Matt’s expedition to Antarctica, followed by a scene of intense intimacy, followed again by a musical interlude. Given the repetition and questionable narrative structure of the film, one can understand the criticism leveled against it almost immediately.

The film at points appears to settle down, yet just as an interesting or thoughtful strand of dialogue appears to emerge, it transpires into a sex session. It is difficult to know what the director is trying to say, that is, if he is trying to say anything at all.

 

Despite my outward criticisms, I must defend the film largely against accusations of it being extremely pornographic – it rarely shows direct penetration and is mostly inferred. As such, the film may be a loosely strung together concertina of sex scenes, but porn it is not.

In lieu of all of this sex and debauchery, the film at least posits the idea of safe sexual interaction, and whilst a pack of Durex are hard to come by in 9 Songs, in one instance, a condom is clearly, visibly in use.

By the time the fourth song booms out and we’re dropped back into the Brixton Academy once again, I was beginning to wonder – is this a music festival? Are they going to a concert every night? Are the 9 songs metaphors for something? Unfortunately, the explanation is nowhere near as interesting as the latter question, but it did make me wonder – are these people loaded?

A very curious lesbian-esque conflict is introduced in the latter stages of the film – it appears to be an attempt to inject emotion into our hedonistic characters. However, considering we feel little-to-nothing for these individuals due to their distinct lack of characterisation (in that all we ever see is them having sex), this attempt ultimately fails.

The gravity of the conflict between Matt and Lisa is expressed through the symbolic meaning of the songs, or rather, the act of going to the concert. Matt, in his next visit to the Academy, attends alone – he is on a whole over wavelength, listening to an completely different song, if you will, and whether this is reflective of a culture clash or something else entirely different, is anyone’s guess. We are also quickly shown a bottle of pills, but its significance is up for debate – we learn who they belong to, but nothing else. There are subtle hints as to who may be suffering from what, but they are exactly that – very subtle, and nothing more than hints.

There is one portion of 9 Songs that I find incredibly difficult to defend – Lisa administers oral sex to Matt in rather unflattering close-up, which I didn’t personally object to, but, in what is the most critically reviled and shocking portion of the film, Matt is shown ejaculating. It just feels unnecessary – the slurping noises are vile in particular, yet no more disturbing than the fact that we can hear children playing outside, presumably mere feet away.

Only in the final sex scene is the viewer able to extricate any definitive, emotive meaning, yet once again, we are barely familiarised enough with these characters beyond their acts of chemical exchange, and so an attempt at causing us to feel anything simply appears forced. The manner in which the film ends, whilst certainly not particularly unique or interesting, was a smart move, considering the temptation that must have lingered to pile on sentiment and clichés. In this respect, in the only manner in which it can be asserted, 9 Songs is a restrained picture.

The ambiguity of the fate of Matt and Lisa’s relationship is an interesting point on which the film ends – the director chooses not to romanticise or force-feed his creation or his audience with even a hint of a slant in either direction, deftly reflecting the fickleness of relationships and the meticulousness with which they must be preened.

9 Songs, as an experimental film, is an interesting exercise, yet it is difficult to consider it a success when everything outside of the sex scenes is either dull, pointless, emotionally corrupt or all of the above. The film should be commended for its daring attempt at capturing raw, gritty, penetrative sex onto celluloid, yet we are overexposed to these moments at the detriment of the film’s effectiveness. Winterbottom shows us more than is necessary to convey the love and affection felt between these characters, and accompanies these moments with musical interludes that appear to have little significance symbolically, thematically, or otherwise. I cannot bring myself to condemn Winterbottom, because the film is not without its meritorious moments, yet at the same time, one cannot consider 9 Songs to effectively traverse the line of glorified pornography, so much as it narrowly scrapes past it.