9 Songs - 2004
By The Bottom Reel Editorial Team ·
9 Songs (2004): Michael Winterbottom’s Explicit Sex-and-Music Experiment
Overview
9 Songs is a 2004 British erotic art film written, directed, and produced by Michael Winterbottom. Premiering at Cannes in May 2004 and released in the UK March 11, 2005, it became notorious as “the most explicit mainstream movie to be so rated” by the BBFC. The title refers to nine live songs by eight rock bands that structure the relationship story.
Plot
Matt Kieran O'Brien, a British glaciologist working in Antarctica, recalls a brief but intense affair with Lisa Margo Stilley, a 21-year-old American student he met at a Black Rebel Motorcycle Club gig at Brixton Academy, London, autumn 2003.
The film alternates between two strands:
Concerts: Matt and Lisa attend live shows by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, The Von Bondies, Elbow, Primal Scream, The Dandy Warhols, Super Furry Animals, Franz Ferdinand, and Michael Nyman.
Sex: In Matt’s sparsely furnished flat, they have explicit, unsimulated sex – including oral sex, intercourse, ejaculation, and a foot job. Matt narrates in voiceover, reflecting from Antarctica on how the relationship burned out. After Christmas, Lisa returns to America. Matt is left alone, intercut with Antarctic ice-scapes.
The structure is deliberate: “Show rock concert, show sex, show icy wastes of Antarctica. Repeat eight times.”
Cast & Crew
Matt – Kieran O’Brien
Lisa – Margo Stilley debut
Bands – Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, The Von Bondies, Elbow, Primal Scream, The Dandy Warhols, Super Furry Animals, Franz Ferdinand, Michael Nyman
Director/Writer/Producer – Michael Winterbottom
Cinematography – Marcel Zyskind
Editors – Mat Whitecross, Michael Winterbottom
Producers – Andrew Eaton, Michael Winterbottom
Production – Revolution Films
Winterbottom gave no script; O’Brien and Stilley improvised. Both actors had body doubles and intimacy coordinators, and Stilley reportedly asked Winterbottom to be named only once in credits to distance herself.
Social Impact & Reception
Controversy: The film made headlines for being the first mainstream British feature with unsimulated sex to receive an 18 certificate from the BBFC. MP Ann Widdecombe complained in Parliament, calling on the Home Secretary to reverse the decision. It sparked debate over “art vs. pornography”.
Critics: Polarized.
Rotten Tomatoes: 23% Tomatometer from 95 critics. Consensus: “The unerotic sex scenes quickly become tedious to watch, and the lovers lack the personality necessary to make viewers care about them.” Metacritic: 43/100 “Mixed or Average” from 29 critics.
Positive: Derek Malcolm, The Guardian: “Nine Songs looks like a porn movie, but it feels like a love story... shot with Winterbottom's customary sensitivity.” Variety: “A touching, often poetic, sometimes achingly real snapshot of a brief encounter.” Salon: “While 9 Songs is sexually explicit in the basic sense, its DIRECTNESS is what's most fascinating”.
Negative: Roger Ebert: “As an idea, the film is fascinating, but as an experience it grows tedious”. Radio Times: “Some will find it a rewarding art house experiment... others watching simply for the explicit and unsimulated lovemaking may well find it boring and pretentious”. Luke Y. Thompson: “Michael Winterbottom delivers the sex, and not much else”.
Audience: Also split. Metacritic User Score: 4.4/10. User reviews range from “Basically is a porno with some music. Terrible” to “beautiful to look at… but doesn't leave you with any kind of feeling”. Many viewers felt they “don’t know these two people, so we can't relate to them”.
Social impact: Minimal mainstream impact, but important in censorship history. It helped normalize unsimulated sex in art cinema post-Intimacy (2001) and The Brown Bunny (2003). The film won Best Cinematography at San Sebastián Film Festival 2004. It’s now a reference point in debates on real sex on screen and is studied in film courses on “porn-art hybrids.”
Budget vs. Box Office
Production Budget: £1 million
Worldwide Gross: $1,590,308
Domestic (US): $66,853
International: $1,523,455
Top markets: UK $581,909, Mexico $287,083, Australia $168,450, Spain $168,175
Performance: Grossed ∼1.6x its budget, so it likely broke even after ancillary sales (DVD, VOD). It opened on 1 US theater July 22, 2005, peaked at 3 theaters. In the UK it opened on 28 screens March 11, 2005. Not a hit, but not a disaster for a micro-release art film.
Ratings
IMDb: 4.7/10 to 4.8/10
Rotten Tomatoes: 23% Tomatometer, no audience score listed but user reviews skew negative.
Metacritic: 43 Metascore; 4.4 User Score
Rating: 18 (UK), NR/NC-17 equivalent (US) Runtime: 69–71 minutes
Bottom line: 9 Songs is an art-house experiment that used real sex and real concerts to chart a short relationship. Winterbottom called it “a snapshot of a brief encounter”. Critics were split between “poetic” and “tedious porn”. It didn’t change cinema, but it did change what the BBFC would pass. As East Bay Express put it: “You may have seen a handjob onscreen, for instance, but have you ever seen a foot job? It's interesting, to say the least”.