"9 Songs"

Yes, this movie contains real sex, not simulated. It's also a real love story about real characters and is really fascinating to watch.

By Stephanie Zacharek

Jul 22, 2005 | You could reduce Michael Winterbottom's "9 Songs" to its barest elements, sex and music, and leave it at that. Some critics and moviegoers undoubtedly will do so, although probably more out of boredom (genuine and affected) than prudery: "9 Songs" features real, not simulated, sex, and although that immediately makes it at least potentially controversial, the reality is that fewer people -- at least the people who go to see indie movies like this -- actually get hot and bothered about such things than we'd like to believe.

But while "9 Songs" is sexually explicit in the basic sense, its directness is what's most fascinating, and ultimately most moving, about it. The first time we see the actors, Kieran O'Brien and Margo Stilley, making love, we're jolted by the realization that what we're watching isn't a coy simulation carefully orchestrated for the camera. "9 Songs" is a direct challenge to any moviegoer who has ever complained (and I'm one of them) about the "bedsheet bandeau" so often used to shield an actress's breasts from the camera during a sex scene, or the clever contortions cameramen will go through to avoid an inadvertent flash of penis.

Winterbottom has said that such "fake" sex has often bothered him, too, which was one of the reasons he wanted to make this movie. But if "fake" sex makes us hoot or groan with derision, watching "real" sex presents a new set of responses altogether. They're surely different for every viewer, but my own feelings included curiosity about both of the actors' bodies, about their shadowy bumps and hollows and about the ways the performers responded to each other's touch; a small bit of shame over my own voyeuristic interest in the characters' private universe, even though, of course, it exists precisely so I will look at it; and a sliver of embarrassment for the actors, not because they have anything to be ashamed of, but because I recognize how they've opened themselves up to the world in a way that few performers do.

"9 Songs" -- which is being released unrated -- doesn't, by the way, belong in the category of porn, first because Winterbottom's interest in camera angles has nothing to do with getting the hottest view. And it's a porn actor's job to have sex on-camera; while that job comes with its own set of challenges (and, yes, it does qualify as acting), in porn the performers' objective is relatively uncomplicated: to get us off.

Winterbottom and his actors have far different goals. "9 Songs" isn't titillating, at least not in a bang-up way. But its mournful eroticism burrows deep, maybe because we recognize these are not just bodies we're watching -- they're characters, stand-ins for people. Their names are Matt and Lisa, and, particularly in Lisa's case, we don't know much about their daytime lives -- in "9 Songs," the lives Matt and Lisa lead in bed are their real lives; all the rest is just a vague accessory to the people they really are.

And because this love story is told in flashback from Matt's point of view, we have a sense at the beginning of where it's headed. We're watching a couple enjoying the ultimate kind of closeness, knowing they're already in the process of flying apart. Matt is a glaciologist and studies ice formations in the Antarctic. He describes the Antarctic as a place where one can feel "claustrophobia and agoraphobia in one place -- like two people in bed." The suggestion -- one we see played out in Matt and Lisa's sex life, as well as in Matt's reflective assessment of their relationship -- is that he ended up loving Lisa more than she loved him. The fun and pleasure of sex are relatively easy to put on film. But subtler shades of feeling and doubt, which sometimes change almost from night to night in the early stages of a relationship, are harder to capture, and that's what Winterbottom gets here.

Next Page: First a concert, then a night of sex ...

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