Why you can trust 12DOVE
Nine songs. Two copulating actors. One London apartment. Zero script. Sketching the relationship of Matt (Brit regular Kieran O'Brien) and Lisa (US newbie Margo Stilley) through a plotless hopscotch of live sex and live rock concerts, Michael Winterbottom's controversial DV strip-down adds up to far less than the sum of its parts.
Like Gus Van Sant's Gerry gone nude, Winterbottom's brief encounter teases with light-dappled naturalism only to wilt into numbing boredom. With O'Brien and Stilley improv-ing a fizzle-free intimacy void, it's as blank as the Antarctic wastes O'Brien's character reminisces over (a trying metaphor, that). Even Brit cinema's first mainstream pop-shot is delicately edited for anti-erotic effects.
The heat, in fact, comes from 9 Songs's grainy concert footage, from the likes of Franz Ferdinand and Primal Scream. So, a skin-flick that leaves you keener to catch a live gig than shag an aloof American girl? Something wrong there.
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