I must admit that I'm probably not the most neutral person to write about 9 Songs, not because I'm a sucker for real sex onscreen, but because I'm a fan of writer/director Michael Winterbottom's work and of some of the bands featured in his films, namely the great Primal Scream, as well as the cool Dandy Warhols and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club—three acts that I've also seen live.
Stripped of any plot device and aiming at capturing life, full-fleshed, in its most realistic incarnation, whether it's sounds or sweat, the film is structured around 9 Songs, intertwining the sexual romps of a couple with the 9 concerts that they attend.
Kieran O'Brien (Matt) and Margo Stilley (Lisa) give fearless performances here, abandoning their bodies to the screen and to each other, for real. Between their encounters and the shows, there is not much time left for verbiage, and it is probably better as the two protagonists are, to be frank, better at playing with their bodies than at showcasing real acting chops. As for porn aficionados, they'll probably be disappointed, these two actors are far from Hollywood's—or I should say the Valley's—beauty standards. While the movie is pretty hot, they are pretty unattractive: Stilley looks especially boyish, which she actually mentions in the film while looking in the mirror. And this unattractiveness is what classifies this film as an experiment in realism with average-looking people, rather than just a porn flick.
9 Songs is a logical step in Winterbottom's body of work, from his look at the British music scene in 24 Hour Party People to the sex scene in Code 46. Just as with his actors, he realistically approaches the shows he films as a spectator, from the audience's perspective, rather than giving us a professional-looking shoot. What's amusing here is that, while sex and concerts are associated as live experiences, a gig is by definition a performance, contrasting with the two actors who are not "performing". Beside the bands mentioned at the beginning, the film also includes cuts from Franz Ferdinand, Elbow & Michael Nyman.
Of course you might question the purpose of this film, especially if you don't care either for these bands or for these actors' escapades. And to tell you the truth, there is nothing that I could say to contradict you, except that it is a self-conscious exercise that has its unique place in cinema. By looking at this film, I realized that in the long run Winterbottom's filmography tends to follow a similar path as Mike Figgis'. Both take the risk to experiment with cinema as an art, and they don't care if the result is successful, pretentious or a failure. I don't think that 9 Songs is a failure, but it is certainly not a pioneering work mixing art-house and sex, since the French—of course—already preceded him with, most particularly, Bertrand Bonello's The Pornographer, which rather than just playing with the concept of sex, offered an exciting mise-en-abyme, assimilating porn to the French new wave.
The DVD allows you to directly access each of the 9 Songs and features interviews with Winterbottom (too short) and the actors who don't have much to say beyond how they dealt with sex onscreen and what the consequences were.
