9 Songs 18+

Matt, a young glaciologist, soars across the vast, silent, icebound immensities of the South Pole as he recalls his love affair with Lisa. They meet at a mobbed rock concert in a vast music hall–London's Brixton Academy. They are in bed at night's end. Together, over a period of several months, they pursue a mutual sexual passion whose inevitable stages unfold in counterpoint to nine live-concert songs.

9 Songs is a 2004 British film, directed by Michael Winterbottom. The title refers to the nine songs played by eight different rock bands that complement the story of the film.

The film was controversial on its original release due to its sexual content, which included unsimulated footage of the two leads having sexual intercourse and performing oral sex as well as a scene of ejaculation. The release sparked a debate over whether scenes of unsimulated sex artistically contribute to the film's meaning or overstep the border into pornography. It was released unrated in the U.S. Nonetheless, the film received an 18 certificate from the British Board of Film Classification in Britain and became the most explicit mainstream film to be so rated in the country. In Australia, the Office of Film and Literature Classification gave the film an X rating which would have prevented the film being shown theatrically and restricted sale of the film to the Australian Capital Territory and Northern Territory. The OFLC Review Board later passed the film with an R rating, although the South Australian Classification Council raised the rating back to X in South Australia. In New Zealand, while the Society for the Promotion of Community Standards lobbied for the film to be kept out of cinemas, it was passed uncut at R18 by the Office of Film and Literature Classification. The film was broadcast on New Zealand pay TV Rialto Channel in July 2007.


The film tells the modern love story set over a period of five or six months in London, England of a young couple: Matt, a British climatologist, and Lisa, an American exchange student. The story is framed in a personal review from Matt's perspective when he goes for a trip to the Antarctic. Their main common interest is a passion for live music and they frequently attend rock concerts together; the film depicts the couple, or Matt alone, watching nine songs at these concerts all set at the Brixton Theatre. It also shows their affair during a weekend getaway into the countryside, and their travels around London. Lisa brings their short and intense relationship to an end at Christmas time when she returns home to America.