9 Songs

Colour, 35 mm
United Kingdom, 2004, 65 min
Section: Another View
Oficiální stránky: www.stardust-filmverleih.de/9Songs

Synopsis

Lisa is an American living in London. At a concert in Brixton she meets Matt; they fall passionately in love but then break up a year later. That’s all. Michael Winterbottom’s low-budget movie was shot without a script, using only a skeleton crew and a handheld camera. The film’s simple plot unfolds retrospectively. While flying over Antarctica, Matt reminisces about his relationship with Lisa. Sex scenes and moments of everyday life mingle with footage of concerts that the couple attends at Brixton Academy (e.g. the groups Franz Ferdinand and Primal Scream), and where we also hear the nine songs of the title. The explicit sex scenes are not included merely to shock the viewer. Winterbottom aims for a sensitive portrayal of the nascency of a relationship, when two people learn everything they can about each other. 9 Songs is, above all, an unostentatious look at what a newly loving couple does behind closed doors. Kieran O’Brien, who plays Matt, worked with Winterbottom on 24 Hour Party People and “Cracker” as well. 

About the director

Michael Winterbottom (b. 1961, Blackburn, United Kingdom) graduated in English from Oxford University and in film from Bristol University and London Polytechnic. He started out in television as an editor, documentarist (two documentaries on Ingmar Bergman, among others) and director (e.g. an episode of the series “Cracker”; “Family,” a four-part miniseries for the BBC; and the award-winning drama The Strangers). He debuted with the black lesbian comedy Butterfly Kiss (1994). Next came an adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure entitled Jude (1996); a war story set in occupied Bosnia, Welcome to Sarajevo (1997); the drama I Want You (1998); the generation gap movie Wonderland (1999); and another Hardy transfer, The Claim (2000). The pseudo-documentary 24 Hour Party People (2001), the immigrant story In This World (2002) and the sci-fi flick Code 46 (2003) were presented at the Karlovy Vary IFF.