The Bishop on 9 Songs

The Bishop has often felt that there is something fundamentally ludicrous in the practice of sex. Not so much Lord Chesterfield’s observation—‘the pleasure is momentary, the position ridiculous, and the expense damnable’—but rather, outside the realm of well-crafted pornography, a lack of physical (or, indeed, emotional) grace. Of course, this does not make the carnal pleasures any less pleasurable, as few of us, during the act of intercourse, are actually in a position to see what’s going on; but as anyone who has, like the Bishop, contributed to the world’s oversupply of porn with a little home-movie action will know, rarely do those amateur productions captivating viewing make. A lot of this may be simple embarrassment, of the sort that safely prevents us seeking lessons from our parents or masturbating in front of mirrors. But there is also something crude about the gross-motor get-on-and-get-off act of shagging that makes scrutinizing it about as savoury as watching rhinos do the same.

This is the first problem with 9 Songs, Michael Winterbottom’s own attempt to masturbate in front of a mirror: it is not erotic. Filmed sexual activity may be, quite frequently, erotic; but when it is, it is for much the same reason that dramas are dramatic: because we have drawn from life, not photocopied it. Truth, in narrative, is not only—or, even, often—found in facsimile; else we would have no need of the facsimile. If Winterbottom were ever to have succeeded with this predictably ill-conceived project, he would have to have done much more with his subject matter than stick a camera in front of it and hope for the best. What we have here then, in place of a story, is a slightly embarrassed recording of a slightly embarrassing act.

Should eroticism matter, though? Winterbottom has stated, somewhere, that his goal was make a film about sex that was not erotic. (Perhaps he might have saved the Bishop sixty-nine minutes, and mentioned that he also wanted to make a film about sex that was not good.) This is a laudable (if slightly baffling) aim, but in eroticism’s absence Winterbottom has provided no reason for his sequence of intimate interludes. We watch this couple fuck; why? It tells us nothing about them—narratively, metaphorically, even physically—except that rather ordinary couples like to make out, too.

The use of non-actors works for Ken Loach; it does not work for Winterbottom. Margo Stilley’s Lisa is nigh-on unbearable: a self-absorbed prat played by a self-absorbed twat. He fares little better with his choice of the experienced Kieran O'Brien: his contribution to any film, on the evidence herein, could be little more than functional: he would be in it. Winterbottom doesn’t even have much luck with the bands; as shot by him, the Bishop can only wonder how they have drawn such enthusiastic crowds.

No script was written for this hour-long exercise in loitering, which the Bishop hears is typical of Winterbottom. That may be because this indolent director is incapable of writing one. In fact, Winterbottom makes only one concession to having thought about this dross for longer than it took to come up with the gimmick: that staple of films that are sure to be both ‘arty’ and dull: narration. At the movie’s beginning Matt informs us, amongst a string of platitudes and pseudo-allegorical drivel, that the only thing he identifies with the memory of Lisa is sex. The Bishop can only wonder, then, why on earth he remembers her at all.