Quartile rating: 5.5/10 · 1 rating
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 unfold in counterpoint to nine live-concert songs.
9 Songs is Michael Winterbottom's provocative experiment in explicit art cinema — real sex intercut with live concert footage from acts like Franz Ferdinand and The Dandy Warhols. Its novelty lies in the raw, documentary-like approach to intimacy and the structural conceit of music as emotional scaffolding. However, the near-absence of plot beyond a thin retrospective framing (the glaciologist voiceover) leaves the film dramatically inert, and the non-professional performances from the leads are functional at best. Cinematography has a grainy, handheld immediacy that suits the material. The ending, a brief Antarctic coda, is melancholic but feels underdeveloped given the sparse narrative investment throughout. Ultimately more a bold formal provocation than a satisfying film.