9 Songs

9 Songs is a modern-day love story directed by young Brit filmmaker Michael Winterbottom (In This World, 24 Hour Party People, Code 46). Its principal actors are Kieran O’Brien (24 Hour Party People, My Kingdom) and Margo Stilley (in her acting debut) and the film is produced by Winterbottom’s great friend Andrew Eaton.

Its recently hit the tabloids for being particularly sexually explicit since it contains real sex between a couple having a relationship but before you get too excited, its not particularly titillating.

9 Songs takes place in London in the autumn of 2003 and follows the casual affair between Matt (O’ 'Brien) and Lisa (Stilley) with live footage from the 9 concerts they go to together: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, The Von Bondies, Elbow, Primal Scream, The Dandy Warhols, Super Furry Animals, Franz Ferdinand and Michael Nyman.

The idea of the film is ok, it seems authentic enough, watching how the couple met at a gig and then following their relationship through the gigs they go to. If anything though, if you like indie music, you might just get more excitement from watching the bands on view rather than the couple 'in action' !

Overall though, given the film’s amazingly short running time of 70 mins, you may feel a little short-changed by the experience as I did, since there’s not a great deal of significance to latch onto. With the music - I wanted to hear more of many of the bands, with the relationship, I wanted to see a bit more - you see enough of them physically, but the film for example, doesn’t provide the couple’s very first exchange at the first gig - it might have been nice to see the chat up for instance.

Given the shortness of the running time, it could have been fleshed out a bit - they could have had a telling argument scene at a friends' party for instance or extended the ending so to speak. There was a great furore about the sex content but if anything Intimacy (2001) and the Catherine Breillat film Romance (1999) are more sexually exciting.

It will sell on the back of the sex and with news of the bands being shown in the film but if anything the film’s best selling point is its realism. Its sense of authenticity and naturalness are a plus but it needs more than that. One gets the impression Winterbottom made this as a small lighter interlude inbetween his weightier projects.

Matt Arnoldi