| SEMINAL LIVE : Michael Winterbottom's 9 Songs [6/10] |
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| Friday, 11 March 2005 | |
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Winterbottom's last film - the intriguing, globetrotting sci-fi misfire Code 46 - left many people cold because they didn't detect any ‘chemistry' between mismatched stars Tim Robbins and Samantha Morton. No such complaints will surely be levelled at this return-to-form follow-up, however - because that really is leads Kieran O'Brien and (newcomer) Margot Stilley up there having real sex on screen, on numerous occasions, in a film that chronicles the short-lived, turbulent but convincingly passionate affair between their characters Matt and Lisa in late 2003. This explicitness has been a talking-point ("is it porn or is it art?") ever since the premiere at Cannes last May, and the film's distributors will undoubtedly be keen to whip up as much controversy as possible with the box-office returns in mind. But there's much more to 9 Songs than a few sweaty moments of full-frontal penetration - and if, say, Monica Bellucci and Vincent Cassel got down to business in a picture called, say, Neuf chansons, it's unlikely that quite so much fuss would have resulted. As the title indicates, the film is at least as much about music as it is about sex: like many London-based young people, Matt and Lisa are avid gig-goers, and Winterbottom rather audaciously incorporates nine complete live performances in full from Elbow, Franz Ferdinand, the Von Bondies (easily the pick of the bunch with an electrifying ‘Cmon Cmon'), Super Furry Animals, Primal Scream, the Dandy Warhols, a classical interlude from Michael Nyman, plus two bookending tracks from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. Winterbottom's ‘workaholicism' has yielded twelve features in the decade since since his debut Butterfly Kiss, and by this stage he unsurprisingly knows exactly what he's doing - 9 Songs may not be quite up to the level of his best film, 24 Hour Party People (in which O'Brien played Nathan McGough) but it's a commendably innovative and uncompromising piece of work. Not to mention short - even if that running-time of 69 minutes looks suspiciously like a too-convenient double-entendre. Some critics on the festival circuit have apparently considered taking a stopwatch into the screening to check the length - but that, surely, would be somewhat anal. Neil Young 1st March, 2004 (written for Tribune magazine) 9 SONGS : [6/10] UK 2004 : Michael WINTERBOTTOM : 69 mins seen at Cinerama cinema, Rotterdam (Netherlands) 30th January 2005 - press show - Rotterdam Film Festival originally rated 7/10, but downgraded after further reflection, 10th Oct 2005 click here for the longer original version of this review, from Rotterdam '05 |
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