Cannes- The most sexually explicit film in the history of mainstream British cinema, containing unsimulated sex scenes including fellatio, ejaculation and cunnilingus, many in close-up, yesterday had its first screening at Cannes.
Michael Winterbottom, the Lancashire-born director of Nine Songs, a love story, said: “I had been thinking for a while about the fact that most cinematic love stories miss out on the physical relationship, and if it is indicated at all everyone knows it is fake.
“Books deal explicitly with sex, as they do with any other subject. Cinema has been extremely conservative and prudish. I wanted to go to the opposite extreme and show a relationship only through sex. Part of the point of making the film was to say, ‘What’s wrong with showing sex?'”
The film revolves around a young couple in London, Matt and his American girlfriend Lisa. The sex scenes, which occupy more than half of the film, are intercut with scenes of bands playing, including Franz Ferdinand, the Dandy Warhols, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and Super Furry Animals. The story is framed by shots of Matt flying over the desolate plains of Antarctica, as he remembers the relationship from afar.
The screening yesterday was at 10am, too soon after breakfast for many viewers. The grunt and huff-and-puff factor in the film is notably high, and the language is strong.
Matt is played by Kieran O’Brien, with whom Winterbottom has worked on a previous film, 24 Hour Party People. However, the woman playing Lisa has asked that her name not be used in coverage of the movie, although it does appear in the credits. “She’s not an actress,” said Winterbottom. “She really likes the film but she is going back to university and I think she wants to keep a low profile.”
Despite the intimacy of the subject-matter, shooting the film was straightforward, according to Winterbottom. Having cast the two leads, a rehearsal was staged, after which they were given the opportunity to leave the project. “After a couple of days it was a case of that was what we were doing, and everyone adapted,” he said. It was a matter of going “one step further” than the requirements of conventional, simulated sex scenes.
The film has not yet been given a certificate, though Winterbottom is optimistic. Of the fellatio-and-ejaculation scene, the one likely to give the censors most pause, he said: “We can always take that out.”
In the film the couple also attend Michael Nyman’s 60th birthday concert, with shots of the composer playing the piano at the Hackney Empire in east London. “I’m very pleased to be in the most sexually explicit film in British film history,” said Nyman from Berlin yesterday, “especially as I am not doing anything sexual. I can’t wait to see it.”
Derek Malcolm, the Guardian’s veteran film writer, said: “Nine Songs looks like a porn movie, but it feels like a love story. The sex is used as a metaphor for the rest of the couple’s relationship. And it is shot with Winterbottom’s customary sensitivity.”
Winterbottom’s previous work includes the 1996 Jude, an adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s novel starring Kate Winslet and Christopher Eccleston, and Welcome to Sarajevo, about an ITN reporter’s adoption of a Bosnian child. He is currently working on a football movie, Goal.