Editor’s Note: The following article written by Eric Francis is part of the Planet Waves archives, only available to subscribers of Planet Waves Astrology News. The searchable, seven-year archive contains thousands of articles and horoscopes written by Eric and the Planet Waves team. –RA
EARLIER THIS WEEK, I saw the film 9 Songs [originally titled 9 Songs (Not About You), at least in the British press], directed by Michael Winterbottom. When it came out last spring, premiering at the same Cannes Film Festival where Fahrenheit 9/11 got so much attention, it was portrayed in the English tabloid newspapers as deserving extremely close scrutiny, the most lewd film ever, and as something potentially threatening to the foundations of society. Translation: it was a movie with a lot of sex — by all accounts, good sex.
As a lover of erotic culture, this got my attention. I trusted that it would be excellent. Many Google searches, eight months and four countries later, 9 Songs finally arrived in Paris, and I went to the premier showing here.
I literally bought the last ticket in a rather large cinema, walked into the theater and was handed a Durex condom (part of a safe sex promotion, I imagine; I don’t think the theater’s owners were expecting an orgy to break out, but if one did, we were all prepared) and squeezed into 10th row.
There, I entertained myself taking pictures of the blank movie screen waiting for this long-hoped-for experience of what I knew would be an actual erotic film.
The story is that of a couple having a monogamous relationship. They are in love. The story is set in London. They meet at a concert, they go home, they have sex. Their relationship develops. She spends a lot of time at his apartment. They cook food and eat it; they talk; they go out to more really good concerts; she smokes a few cigarettes; they dabble in recreational drugs a couple of times; they drink coffee and tea. They get into the occasional argument; they have their differences. But mostly they have sex and enjoy it, which occupies perhaps a quarter of the film’s time. (Not, as has been implied, the entire movie.)
He’s a scientist studying the ice in Antarctica and really likes his job; you learn something about that mysterious place, and there are some stunning landscape scenes, as well as scenes inside the ice laboratory in London. She works in a bar, which does not factor into the story.
The sex they have is loving, interesting and passionate. They are beautiful and conscious, though in many ways, reasonably average urban people — however, and this detail takes them out of average category — they are quite sexually compatible.