WhatzUp

9 Songs
by Derek Neff

In Michael Winterbottom’s 9 Songs, we learn that no human ever stepped foot on the continent of Antarctica before the 20th Century. Unlike March of the Penguins, though, 9 Songs isn’t an informative documentary about the harshest continent on the globe. Make sure you don’t get the two movies confused, or you’ll have a lot of explaining to do to the kiddies.

Matt (Kieran O’Brien) is a glaciologist on expedition in Antarctica. While flying over the endless sheets of ice in a low-flying airplane, or camping in his small tent thousands of miles from the nearest music club, Matt fondly recalls his intense affair with Lisa (Margo Stilley), which ended when Lisa left England to go back home to America.

As a couple, Matt and Lisa had two prevailing passions: attending rock concerts and having sex. Through extensive flashbacks, we see generous dollops of them engaging in both activities. In fact, that is the movie, in a nutshell: live music and sex.

Matt and Lisa meet during a Black Rebel Motorcycle Club show at the Brixton Academy in London. Later that night, they have passionate sex. Over the course of the movie they also go to see the Von Blondies, Franz Ferdinand, the Dandy Warhols, Elbow and several others. The musical sequences sound and look great, as well they should (Winterbottom directed 24 Hour Party People, one of the best rock movies ever made).

The couple have sex - and when I say sex I mean real, unsimulated sex - seemingly whenever they’re not going to concerts. The sex is, let me make this very clear, as explicit as it can possibly be. Unlike porn, though, the emphasis in 9 Songs is more on the two people having sex than it is on the act itself. Winterbottom’s intentions are clearly not pornographic, but they are confrontational. Winterbottom is directly challenging our preconceptions of what content does and does not belong in a “real” movie. And by attempting to show us sex as “real” couples have it, he also reveals the insincere treatment of sex in mainstream movies (and, for that matter, in porn movies).

Winterbottom’s chief point, though, seems to be that you can learn everything about a couple by seeing just one or two isolated aspects of their relationship, but - at least in this case - I guess I don’t agree. We yearn to see Matt and Lisa in a variety of situations. We want them to meet each other’s friends and family; we need to see them arguing about art, and food and, yes, music and sex. There’s very little here in the way of conversation, and what there is is mundane and insubstantial. The sex scenes do not have much meaning or poignancy because we don’t really know what’s at stake for either of these people (and we don’t much like them, either, since they both seem superficial and, well, a little stupid). Ultimately, we cannot extrapolate an entire love affair or the people involved in it from just watching a couple alternately rock out and get it on. As a result, the movie ends up becoming the one thing you’d think a movie about rock music and sex could never be: boring.