Film
9 Songs
Michael Winterbottom's audacious 70-minute film weaves together intimate scenes of a couple's relationship with live concert footage, creating something between experimental cinema and erotic essay. It's unafraid, unflinching, and refuses easy narrative comfort. For viewers hungry for something that treats sex and music as equally valid subjects for art, not exploitation.
Should you watch it?
Watch it if you want a frank, elliptical study of a romance told through its bodies and its gigs, and you already love the sound of the bands playing on screen.
Skip it if the sex is explicit and unsimulated, and the connecting story is thin, so if you need dialogue and plot to carry you, the hour will feel bare.
What it asks of you: Only seventy minutes, but it moves in long stretches of concert footage and quiet, repeated encounters, so patience with mood matters more than narrative momentum.
Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.
If you liked this
Before Sunrise1995
Two strangers meet on a train and spend one perfect night talking in Vienna. Romantic without sentimentality, it trusts dialogue and connection over plot. The spiritual opposite of manufactured drama.
But Some find the pacing glacial and the constant conversation exhausting rather than enchanting. No plot momentum whatsoever.

Mulholland Drive2001
Refusal to explain itself, dreams bleeding into reality, Los Angeles as seductive trap. Lynchian cinema that rewards your attention without guaranteeing answers. Obsessively rewatchable.
But The non-linear structure bewilders some viewers. It's deliberately obtuse about what is 'really' happening, which can feel frustrating rather than profound.

Enter the Void2010
A first-person journey through Tokyo's neon underworld and into the afterlife, shot like a dream from inside someone's head. Visually hypnotic, structurally bold, and genuinely unlike anything else.
But Seventeen minutes of hallucination and neon can feel like punishment if you're unprepared. It's more experience than narrative; many abandon it early.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from 9 Songs
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Godard's Passion1982
Both use live performance (rock concerts, operatic staging) as counterpoint to intimate human drama rather than mere accompaniment. Both treat watching itself as the subject.
Godard's experimental work about a film crew making a period drama while their personal lives collapse around them. Music and cinema collide as directly as in 9 Songs, but Godard fragments both into pure sensation and form.
But Deliberately incoherent and nearly dialogue-free at times. Godard's late work requires surrender to obliqueness; conventional pleasure is not on offer. Almost unwatchable for some.

More like this (7)
22 Jump Street2014
A comedy sequel that deconstructs its own formula with genuine warmth and intelligence. Funny in the moment but also genuinely moving about friendship and aging out of your own story.
But The self-referential humour gets wearying if you're not in sync with its particular rhythm. Some gags land as smug rather than clever.

Dogville2003
Lars von Trier's minimalist American parable: a woman arrives in a small town that slowly, methodically destroys her goodness. Theatre-like staging forces you to watch cruelty directly, unbuffered by cinematic comfort.
But It's a three-hour sermon about human depravity with a lead performance that some find mannered. The minimalist set can read as cheap rather than experimental.

The Brown Bunny2003
Chloë Sevigny gives an unflinching performance in this spare, aching road movie about grief. Winterbottom's peer in refusing sentimentality, asking you to sit with silence instead.
But The pacing makes 94 minutes feel like four hours. One explicit scene overshadowed the entire film's reception; it may distract rather than move you.

Nymphomaniac: Vol. II2013
Von Trier's most nakedly autobiographical work: a woman recounts her sexual history without shame or redemption. Graphic, intellectually ambitious, furious. Treats its subject with neither pornographic thrill nor moralizing disgust.
But Extremely graphic sexual content meant for shock value as much as insight. Four hours long, and the intellectual framing can feel like justification rather than art.

Caché2005
A married couple receives anonymous videotapes of their apartment. Haneke's controlled masterpiece about complicity, erasure, and the violence we inherit. It doesn't resolve; it haunts.
But The austere direction and moral ambiguity frustrate viewers wanting clarity. The ambiguous ending feels unearned to some, like withholding rather than suggesting.

Holy Motors2012
Denis Lavant transforms into ten different people across ten vignettes in a single night. Surreal, exuberant, and committed to the idea that cinema is about transformation and mystery, not answers.
But Its deadpan absurdism can feel like style over substance. Two-plus hours of escalating strangeness will lose anyone needing coherence or purpose.

A Ghost Story2017
Both use extreme constraints (concert footage, a sheet-covered figure) to force you to find meaning in what remains. Both require patience and emotional surrender rather than plot engagement.
Rooney Mara sits under a white sheet eating pie for ten minutes while a love story unfolds around her and across centuries. Devastating meditation on time, loss, and what remains after we leave.
But Deliberately small in scale and repetitive in its imagery. The famous pie-eating scene reads as indulgent pretension rather than poetry if you resist its rhythm.

People
Cast
Kieran O'BrienMatt
Margo StilleyLisa
Courtney Taylor-TaylorHimself - The Dandy Warhols (uncredited)
Alex KapranosHimself - Franz Ferdinand (uncredited)
Guy GarveyHimself - Elbow (uncredited)
Robert Levon BeenHimself - Black Rebel Motorcycle Club (uncredited)
Peter HayesHimself - Black Rebel Motorcycle Club (uncredited)
Gruff RhysHimself - Super Furry Animals (uncredited)- Jason StollsteimerHimself - The Von Bondies (uncredited)
- Marcie BolenHerself - The Von Bondies (uncredited)
Michael NymanHimself (uncredited)
Bobby GillespieHimself - Primal Scream (uncredited)
Directing
- Michael WinterbottomDirector
Writing
- Michael WinterbottomWriter
Production
- Melissa ParmenterAssociate Producer
- Julie DunneCasting
- Steve DalyCasting
- Fiona McGuireHead of Production
- Helen PhelpsPost Producer
- Jethro HarrisPost Producer
- Andrew EatonProducer
- Michael WinterbottomProducer
- Martyn RichmondProduction Assistant
- Molly TudhopeProduction Assistant
Recommended by
Man of La Mancha, Nymphomaniac: Vol. II, dot, The Burden, A Thousand And One Nights in Bohemia