Ray Pride

Michael Winterbottom's "9 Songs" sketches the physical relationship of a mismatched London couple, a grizzled, fortyish "glaciologist" named Matt and 21-year-old Lisa, a skinny barmaid on antidepressants, through nine concerts at London's Brixton Academy, which alternate with the explicit details of their sexual acts. The grimy, patron's-eye views of songs by the likes of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Primal Scream, the Dandy Warhols and Franz Ferdinand have a certain electricity, and the gestures toward and during the couple's sex hold a universal banality that keeps the film both from becoming pornography or from becoming psychological drama. But the grimy video-to-film palette holds a certain truth about concerts and sex: everyone remembers different sensations while sharing the same electrified mood. There are a fistful of tossed-off lines that have some flutter-away authenticity, such as her reading of "Aw, baby, pay attention to me," and "Sometimes when you kiss me, I want to bite you, I don't mean in a nice way, I just want to bite you really, really hard and make you bleed." (Ouch!) Truly painful are the more pre-determined bits, such as Matt's Antarctica-inspired musings, which seem unfelt and derivative, as does a dip into Michael Nyman's sixtieth birthday concert at their corner club. Compare the cold sentimentality of Matt's line while flying over the tundra, "When I remember Lisa, I don't think about her clothes, or her work, where she was from, or even what she said. I think of her smell. Her taste. Her skin touching mine" to these more literary lines from Ian McEwan's novel, "Enduring Love": "I caught in the fibers of her sweater the tang of the open air and imagined I saw the sky spread before me. Everything was touch and breath." While the fellatio and ejaculation scenes--notorious since the Cannes debut--are strong stuff, the remainder of the activity turns more Brit-o-phile: bondage games and a final act, a grim bit of coitus that's visually centered on the game actress' anus. 69m.

"9 Songs" opens Friday at the Music Box.

(2005-08-23)

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