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9 Songs
Mixed or average reviews
Based on 29 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 19 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama | Foreign | Musical | Romance
Written by: Michael Winterbottom
Directed by: Michael Winterbottom
Release Date:
Theatrical: July 22, 2005
DVD: November 22, 2005
Running Time: 71 minutes, Color
Origin: UK
Summary
RATING: Not Rated
Starring Kieran O'Brien, Margo Stilley, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, The Dandy Warhols, Elbow, Franz Ferdinand, Michael Nyman, Primal Scream, Super Furry Animals, and The Von Bondies
Matt, a young glaciologist, soars across the vast, silent, icebound immensities of the South Pole as he recalls his love affair with Lisa. They meet at a mobbed rock concert in a vast music hall -- London's Brixton Academy. They are in bed at night’s end. Together, over a period of several months, they pursue a mutual sexual passion whose inevitable stages (familiar to anyone who's ever been in love) unfold in counterpoint to the nine live-concert songs of the story's title. (Tartan Films)
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Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Variety Derek Elley
A touching, often poetic, sometimes achingly real snapshot of a brief encounter related almost entirely through the bedroom.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Stephen Holden
9 Songs, for all its failed ambitions and its tinge of sexism, is lovely to watch.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
While 9 Songs is sexually explicit in the basic sense, its DIRECTNESS is what's most fascinating, and ultimately most moving, about it.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jami Bernard
Michael Winterbottom nakedly goes where no "respectable" director has gone before - to sex and beyond! His provocative 9 Songs is the first movie by a director of Winterbottom's standing to depict real, uncensored sex between its lead actors.
Read Full Review >New York Post Kyle Smith
The film accurately reminds you, if you need reminding, what it's like to have your mind hijacked by somebody's body.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Allison Benedikt
Ingenious with his use of music and hypnotic pacing, Winterbottom keeps us in his world as usual. But this time that world feels ever more gratuitous, meandering and puzzling, with sex that's less and less authentic even though it's real.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Luke Y. Thompson
This movie is, essentially, porn, and whether it's a turn-on is likely to be subjective to each viewer. Those who find traditional porn too artificial should be pleased.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Ken Fox
Members of what used to be referred to euphemistically as the "raincoat crowd," will probably enjoy Winterbottom's experiment more than most.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Michael Atkinson
Winterbottom never provides the empathic connective tissue we expect. Love it or not, 9 Songs amounts to a common human rite fastidiously caught in amber, giving off no heat or joy but crystallized for the future.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
Nobody will go to see Michael Winterbottom's sexually explicit, novelty-act drama - a naughty peep show for sobersides, disguised as a nature documentary - to hear the songs; everyone will go to see the shagging, which occupies the majority of the screen time.
Read Full Review >Time Richard Corliss
Neither lurid nor especially compelling. This is the triumph, and the limitation, of 9 Songs: it makes explicit movie sex ordinary--as ordinary as the sexual activities of most of the folks watching it.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
It's always hard to predict what Winterbottom will try next, but this experiment isn't worth repeating, the lively concert scenes notwithstanding. Be forewarned that the sexual scenes aren't simulated.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
As an idea, the film is fascinating, but as an experience it grows tedious; the concerts lack closeups, the sex lacks context, and Antarctica could use a few penguins.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
For a movie that consists almost entirely of real sex and real rock 'n' roll, 9 Songs feels remarkably conventional.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker
Michael Winterbottom's erotic drama isn't so much a story of a love affair as an anatomy of a sexual relationship.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
It's a smart, provocative idea for a movie. I wish 9 Songs was that movie.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marrit Ingman
It works best as a spank-it movie you don’t have to feel guilty about and that you can dance to. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
With no previous acting experience, she's (Stilley) a natural between the sheets but a rank amateur between the vowels.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Bob Westal
As 9 Songs played out for sixty-nine (count ‘em!) minutes, I started to find myself wishing they would just end the interminable, deliberately underlit, sex scenes and get back to those really hot pics of Antarctica.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen
An examination of a sexual relationship that's about as viscerally explicit as hardcore can get...But as satisfying viewing experiences go, the film comes up mighty short in terms of story, interesting characters and technical prowess.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
Between the performances in the bedroom and on stage, 9 Songs gives off plenty of heat, but the whole project seems half-thought-out and hastily arranged, hampered by butt-ugly DV photography that turn skin tones grimy and make the Brixton scenes look as high-grain as a bowl of Mueslix.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
Yet for all its ballyhooed candor about sexual matters, it's a surprisingly baffling and opaque film, too artistic to be standard pornography and too zealously focused on being graphic to the exclusion of all else to succeed as drama.
Read Full Review >Slate David Edelstein
9 Songs could have been "Last Rock Show in London." Unfortunately, it's stupefyingly dull, even with good music and at the short but resonant length of 69 minutes.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
Never did sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll seem more shopworn and routine.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Ann Hornaday
9 Songs inadvertently proves just how limited experimentation for its own sake can be.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker Anthony Lane
There is a fine film to be made about the retreat from worldly obligation into erotic rite, and Brando and Bertolucci made it in 1972. But what “Last Tango in Paris” proved was that our skin-grazing view of a body makes us more, not less, enthusiastic to grasp the shape of the soul that it enshrines.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Neva Chonin
This disappointing new film from director Michael Winterbottom ("24 Hour Party People") suffers from a similar malaise: It's poetic and pretty, strives for profundity without attaining it, and finally ends up saying nothing.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 5.8 (out of 10) based on 19 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Tim e gave it an8:
If you like porn you'll love this. This is full on sex. Even Skinamax has their limits.
Bill K. gave it a1:
BORING. To address Laura's point, I think the critics DID understand that, but a good filmmaker would've done it better, and had a story to go with it. It's just tedious. There is no plot here. They go to the club, they have sex. Repeat over and over for 69 minutes. The sex scenes won't offend you, just put you to sleep. I gave it a 1 for the live music.
Laura U. gave it an8:
The film is surprisingly bleak - it reflects so well the emptiness of a relationship where the partners are so intimately acquainted with each other's bodies but are not interested in getting to know each other as people. We are given a touching depiction of a barren relationship, and it is only a pity that so many critics failed to see that. If Winterbottom had decided to give us a picture of a rounded relationship, the film probably could not have examined the sexual aspects so deeply without being so long it was really tedious. And one has to ask whether Stilley would have been able to carry it off, whereas she was obviously capable of having sex with enthusiasm. I just wish I could still do it so well - or that I still looked as good!
Ken B. gave it a7:
The plot was uninspiring but the sex, although casual, was an example for all to imitate - gentle and loving. But what pleased me was that the female actor was depicted as explicitly as the male. Too many films, such as Catherine Breillat's "Anatomy of Hell" treat the female lead with a defference not given to the male. For example - the notice upfront in "Anatomy of Hell" that the female lead's body was not exposed in the film - the female body exposed was that of a stand-in. Yet the male leads genitals were not only explicity shown but were shown erect.
zabriskie j. gave it a6:
Empty for the sake of emptiness, which is such a rare pleasure in the realm of obsolete meaningfulness.
Whezz gave it a0:
This film is a vile, nausiating and contrived piece of trash ever translated to celluloid. It is void of character development, decent screenplay and acting. This seems to be nothing but a copy of 'Intimacy' another poor British effort. They both appear to be testing the limits of how much errect penis and penetration you are now allowed to show at the local cinema! This film comes in at 67 minutes. I mean if you are trying to make a serious film about character development and hoping for an audience empathy with the characters this is no where enough time. Also parts if this film are filled with live scenes from the Brixton Accademy. Why? What relevance does this have to a film about character development and relationships? Nothing, the films only objective is to make money for the bands featured and the controversy caused by the explicit and grim sex scenes. This films predictable screenplay can be described very simply. 1. Rock gig 2. Sex 3. Arguement....and repeat until all bands have been exhausted. A load of utter tripe that I had to endure for my film studies course and I left feeling nausous and wondering why it was ever made.
Jonathan H. gave it a10:
Any movie which tries to show sex the way it is deserves a 10 in my book. I live in a part of the US (Utah) where many sexually repressed (& therefore abused & damaged & deranged) people live - where many people like who hate their own bodies & the sexual parts of their natures. I grew up in the culture hear which fears & loathes sex & true honest naked human bodies. When I was growing up I hated & resented the sexual feelings I started to have. Now as a mature adult who's rejected the abusive repressive culture of his youth, I am very pleased and honored that Salt Lake City is as of today one of the places which is showing this film in the US. I commend the film makers for trying to portray sex the way it is - in a way far better than the fakey nonsense of Hollywood, and in a better way than the fakey nonsense of the crass forms of "porn." I know that that porn was a term created by people who didn't like the wall paintings at Pompeii, and I think that non-fakey non-coercive "porn" is highly useful, but fakey porn which has moans and other accouterments which are fake isn't useful. I think we need more portrayals of true human sexuality. It’s not all that flashy. It’s not fake & restful either. It’s just plain old wonderful sex. In “9 Songs” one type of sex is shown - the type where the female prefers that the male leave his condom on long term. But the couple is young, and 20 something young adults rightly play the field, and that’s good. Anyway, one local represse-culture-advocating newspaper in Salt Lake referred to this film as a type of “porn.” I would say that it’s not, any more than getting up in the morning and taking a shower, or seeing yourself naked in the mirror, or even your masturbating or having sex is “porn.” A far better term is >life<. Sex is part of life. To the repressed repressing people I say: Get used to it! Learn to love it!
