"Oh, we're so pretty, oh so pretty vacant," singer Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols snarled in "Pretty Vacant," one of the British band's most perfectly petulant punk anthems. Those lyrics might easily describe 21-year-old Lisa (Margo Stilley), the uninhibited and uninhabited female lead character of "9 Songs" — the latest film from British director Michael Winterbottom. They could also explain Lisa's lover, Matt (Kieran O'Brien). Read the full review
Matt meets Lisa, a visiting American student, at the Brixton Academy in London during a Black Rebel Motorcycle Club concert. Their relationship unfolds as they attend a variety of concerts together, interspersed with explicit sex scenes.
Director: Michael Winterbottom
Starring: Kieran O'Brien, Margot Stilley
Run time: 69 minutes
Release date: July 22, 2005
Rating: Not rated, but includes explicit sex scenes.
On the web
Official movie site
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: B-
"Winterbottom takes a lot of risks. Sometimes, those risks pay off in visually lyrical moments. Other times, the whole thing breaks down into peep-show parody."
Austin American-Statesman: 1 of 5 stars
"The concert footage is unexciting, the sex tells us nothing about the characters, and the detours across glaciers look suspiciously like a tacked-on frame — an attempt to give metaphoric meaning to a movie that never quite gelled."
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