9 Songs

Lisa is an exchange student in London. Her affair with Matt has the urgency of the ephemeral. They are enjoying an extended, unofficial honeymoon; we see them dancing, drinking beer, doing drugs, hanging out, having irrelevant conversations and, above all, going to rock shows (all nine of the titular songs are performed live) and having sex (Matt and Lisa have intercourse the same way they talk; ie, like real human beings as opposed to movie characters). There is generous nudity, and the sex is sometimes tentative and sometimes vigorous, and often uninhibited and experimental – as well as explicit and unsimulated (and, might I add, safe). At the same time, the songs, all except one by indie, garage, and punk rock bands (Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Elbow, Primal Scream, among others), are raw and stark, as befits a live performance (the film’s short length, a little over an hour, likewise adheres to a minimalist punk ethos). The sex scenes follow the musical numbers, in at least one case overlapping until they merge into an audiovisual orgasm, in which the sexual act and the musical act become one, fleshing out the intangible bond that has always existed between sex and rock