“9 Songs” is the cinematic equivalent of the most unexpected musical mash-up — you know, one of those bootlegs that combines the music from one tune with the vocals from another in a way that seems unlikely, yet magically fits together just right.
Like The Eagles’ “One of These Nights” and Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone” — how did it occur to someone to mix these songs together? (If you haven’t heard it, stop reading this right now and go do a Google search for it. You’ll be glad you did.)
Michael Winterbottom is also playing mixmaster these days. With “9 Songs,” the British director has combined an exuberant, evocative concert film with straight-up porn. Yup, there’s no other way to describe it.
Kieran O’Brien and Margo Stilley are doing it — doing everything, really — when they’re not out at London clubs seeing bands, all of them critical darlings.
It’s a simple yet inventive structure. O’Brien and Stilley’s characters, twentysomethings Matt and Lisa, meet one night at a Black Rebel Motorcycle Club concert, then go back to his place and have sex. They catch a Von Bondies show, then go back to Matt’s flat for more sex. Over several months they also see the Dandy Warhols, Super Furry Animals and (best of all) Franz Ferdinand. And they have more sex, nearly every way imaginable.
Winterbottom captures all of this with handheld digital video, natural lighting and largely improvised dialogue. At the concerts, he staged nothing — just placed his unknown actors among the faces in the crowd. That verite approach, coupled with Winterbottom’s art-house pedigree (“Welcome to Sarajevo,” “Wonderland,” the joyous “24 Hour Party People,” which this resembles in its musical interludes) give “9 Songs” the lofty tinge of a film that’s highbrow, not just hardcore.
Because beneath the graphic sex — and it’s refreshing and vaguely noble that the actors are just full-on going for it for the sake of art — “9 Songs” is a wistful love story. At least it is unilaterally.
Matt, a romantic English glaciologist, is reflecting on his relationship with Lisa, an impulsive American, as he travels to the South Pole for work. Memory being a selective phenomenon, he is thinking about the best parts of their brief time together: the most intense, intimate sex; the most exquisite, engaging music.
“When I remember Lisa, I don’t think about her clothes, or her work, where she was from, or even what she said,” Matt recalls as he flies over Antarctica. “I think of her smell, her taste, her skin touching mine.”
And that’s about all Lisa lets him know about her. She’s a mysterious force of nature — lanky and tomboyish in build, with facial features reminiscent of Maggie Gyllenhaal — and she doesn’t let him get too close emotionally. Matt clearly loves Lisa and he tells her so; Lisa is warm but evasive in returning the sentiment.
Of course, these things can never last long, something else Winterbottom depicts realistically. The carefree, coke-induced giddiness that marked the beginning of their relationship turns melancholy. Matt starts feeling threatened by Lisa’s bisexual need for lap dances and her fondness for battery-operated sources of satisfaction. (Can’t Matt understand that she’s just omnivorous and insatiable, and that he shouldn’t take it personally?)
Some will find the sex gratuitous; some will find the structure gimmicky. And in truth, “9 Songs,” could have stood on its own just fine if it had only consisted of the concert segments.