Skipped out on the gigs for the rest of the weekend choosing to blister a fingertip instead with my recent enthusiasm for learning the bass. On Sunday however I checked out what was showing at the Palace Verona and 9 songs sounded interesting so I wandered up the street for an early afternoon session.
9 songs is not a first date sort of film unless you’re feeling particularly courageous. It’s not even a cosy afternoon film for some couples as the crowd of 30 odd demonstrated by diminishing by a third within the first half an hour. I’ve been trying to figure out what to write for a few days because I don’t know quite what to say.
The story begins with a couple meeting at a Black Rebel Motorcycle Club gig at the Brixton Academy. They have sex. They go to another gig. They have more sex. Another gig. More sex. There’s some things about the Antarctic. And a trip to the seaside. And plenty more sex and a handful of gigs.
At the start of the film the sex bothered me because I was enjoying the gig scenes a lot more (missing London again.. ouch!) and the story was nonsense. The attempts to link the songs to the relationship to the movement of ice was all a little wishwash for me. The sex was distracting the plot. The whole film was distracting. The sex was too true. I felt odd when I left. I haven’t felt so odd from a film in a long time.
I can’t really recommend 9 songs yet I can’t really try to disuade except if you’re uncomfortable with watching particularly explicit scenes, or you only like blockbusters and mooshy romance comedies.
Years ago, when I was a wee little underage thing, I used to sit in the Dendy on George Street watching freebie films and wishing that someone would shoot some pure concert footage of all those lovely bands I was listening to from the UK and I’d be able to sit in the dark and pretend I was there. 9 songs, if you spliced out just the gig scenes and worked on the footage style a little, would have been bliss.