9 Songs

Variety Derek Elley

A touching, often poetic, sometimes achingly real snapshot of a brief encounter related almost entirely through the bedroom.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

9 Songs, for all its failed ambitions and its tinge of sexism, is lovely to watch.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

It's the emotional equivalent of a big shrug.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

For a movie that consists almost entirely of real sex and real rock 'n' roll, 9 Songs feels remarkably conventional.

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.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

It's a smart, provocative idea for a movie. I wish 9 Songs was that movie.

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.

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.

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.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

A stultifying bore.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Never did sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll seem more shopworn and routine.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

9 Songs inadvertently proves just how limited experimentation for its own sake can be.

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.

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.