Every so often a nude scene gets paired with a song that, for better or worse, ends up making it that much more memorable, but this Tunes-day we’re doing things a little differently. We’re examining a music-centric film where the nudity is accompanied by just the sounds of the real sex taking place on camera with our look at 2004’s 9 Songs.
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The title doesn’t lie - there are nine songs in this British arthouse drama from writer/director Michael Winterbottom, but every one of them takes place during flashbacks to live concerts. These are the memories of Kieran O’Brien’s Matt, a climatologist working in Antarctica, who spends his cold, lonely days thinking about two things: those concert memories and all the hot sex he used to have with an American exchange student named Lisa (Margo Stilley).
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Margo Stilley Nude in 9 Songs
Matt and Lisa were together in London over a period of twelve months, and during that time they did a lot of things, like a trip to the country, visiting a strip club, and seeing rock bands like The Von Bondies, The Dandy Warhols, and Franz Ferdinand. But despite all their musical adventures the only rocking and rolling that happens in bed is that of their own bodies.
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The film contains five real sex scenes, one of which is at the very start of the film. It begins with breathy moans from both parties as Margo rides Kieran and then is immediately followed by the still fully nude Margo getting woken up by an alarm on her phone and getting dressed. About fifty minutes in, there’s another scene where Margo gives Kieran a blow job in bed that’s punctuated by some traffic sounds, noisy neighborhood kids, and Kieran thoroughly enjoying Margo slurping his uncut cock.
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There is some light piano that underscores two other sex scenes, one where we get a beav close-up while he goes down on her and another one that’s forever referred to as the “foot job” scene. The one nude scene with an actual song in it is a montage that includes shots ofMargo masturbating with a vibrator set to Goldfrapp’s slow ballad “Horse Tears” - which again, is not considered one of the titular 9 Songs.
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So, to paraphrase the title of one of the actual 9 - by the one band that had two on the roster,Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - whatever happened to their rock and roll?
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As we have seen, songs can make or break a sex scene, but does no music at all enhance the reality of it? If fake sex scenes had foley belly-slapping and dick-licking noises and nothing else, would we think they were real even if we couldn’t see the penetration with our own eyes like we can here? A quick search of real sex scenes on Mr. Skin shows that a lot of them aren’t set to any music, at least in those not considered pornographic. Anyone who’s ever watched an adult film has heard cheesy instrumental elevator music in it at some point. It had to have been a conscious choice, and perhaps the reasoning was to set it apart from porn. But one can’t deny that there is irony in the realization that in a film known for both its music and its very explicit sex, neither of those things ever intersect.
Catch Up With Previous Editions of Songs in the Key of Nudity
—An Early Work from a Dutch Master Baiter
—Sweet Sweetback's Baadaassss Song
