9 orgasmos

I always try to be as clean from other people's / critics opinion before I go and check out a new film.

With Nine Songs, that is a difficult task, because it is the kind of movie everyone talks about without even seen it.

The story is as simple as it can be. It concentrates on the sexual behavior of the characters to show the birth and death of their relationship. It could have all been told around their meals, or their phone conversations. But Michael

Winterbotom chose their sex life - a quite important subject to every couple's life- to tell it all.

I only want to say that it is quite beautiful. Yes, its only sex, but as real as it can be. There is no intention on making the scenes erotic or pornographic, and the honest intimacy projected, strips down the human nature of the characters to

their very basic instincts.

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.

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.

I came to this Michael Winterbottom film from one of his previous efforts starring Samantha Morton and Tim Robbins. I had never heard of him as a director and when Sight and Sound (the house magazine of the BFI) did an article on him I thought he was worthy of attention.

Another reason for seeing this film was the promise of being able to watch a couple having actual sex and no merely faked orgasms and suggested oral sex either and no pornography. I quite wanted to be reminded of the reasons why two people can get together because of what they have in common.

Winterbottom's film is not pornography at all. It is merely a study of a relationship seen through the context of real sex (what nearly all of us have experienced once we are a certain age (18+ usually) and are not bound by religious considerations ie the Catholic priesthood) and popular music. That's all. And the cast are two everyday folk. They are not artificially enhanced porn actors or glossed up dolls for the benefit of the viewer. It is a very much warts and all film, although I have much admiration for Winterbottom to persuade any actor to show the camera (and thus the audience) his real erection and later orgasm.

Once the novelty of watching real adult sex wears off, however, there is little else left and that's the real disappointment of this film. Nevertheless it is an adult movie and some may enjoy it.