Nine ½ Weeks is probably one of the most culturally and economically influential box office bombs in movie history. I t established that there was no real market for high class, mainstream erotica in American film, and also helped spawn and define a cottage industry of lesser quality, niche erotica that continues to this very day, primarily on cable TV. When you add in the fact that Nine ½ Weeks is pretty entertaining as well, you end up with an impressive motion picture.
Here's the plot. A divorced New Yorker named Elizabeth (Kim Basinger) falls under the sexual spell of a mysteriously cool man named John (Mickey Rourke). They have a lot of sex of varying physical and emotional quality. Elizabeth eventually tires of their unhealthy union and leaves. The end. That's not an awful lot to sink your teeth into, but that's sort of the point. This was an attempt to make a legitimate movie about the sexual relationship between two people without delving into the realms of softcore porn. It basically uses their sexual encounters to tell us who these people are why they bond.
Elizabeth is lonely and stuck inside the degenerate artifice of the New York City art crowd. If John had thinning hair and a beer gut, he'd be an obsessive, controlling pervert. Since he looks like what Mickey Rourke looked like in the mid 80s, he's like a fantasy figure come to life to liberate Elizabeth from her inhibitions. His need to command her and her sexuality at first lets her enjoy parts of herself she would never admit to. Eventually, his need to control expresses itself in more and more deviant behavior and Elizabeth finally rebels in order to hold onto the very awareness that John helped stir in her.
Director Adrian Lyne did a very nice job her, though much of the look and all of the music of the film is about as dated as you can get. There's never any doubt what decade Nine ½ Weeks was made in. The scenes of foreplay and sex here are so stylish and powerful that they've been imitated in the sex scenes of countless movies made after this one. And Lyne effectively compensates for the paucity of plot by immersing the viewer into the rhythm of New York City street life and the adolescent culture of the New York City art world.
Basinger and Rourke are stunningly attractive but neither becomes lost in their respective beauty. Basinger's silkily conveys Elizabeth's journey of self-discovery and Rourke is magnetically quiet and calm. What's best about their work here is that each always lets you see that their character is thinking about the games they're playing with each other and choosing to go forward with them.
Stylish direction powerful performances and a good bit of media sensation weren't enough to make this film a hit. I t became a film in the 80s that a lot of people heard about but not that many saw and there's been very little in the way of high class, mainstream erotica out of Hollywood ever since. What did happen is that co-producer and co-writer Zalman King went out to make a few more erotic films, all dumber and much closer to softcore porn, then made his way into cable TV with Red Shoe Diaries. That was an anthology series that did a more prurient and less sophisticated version of this movie over and over again. It proved their was an audience of middle brow erotica, just not one that would go to the cinema.
I quite liked Nine ½ Weeks. I also liked that Basinger got naked but it spared me any sight of Rourke's ass. If you're looking for a smart and graceful movie about two people getting it on, this is it.
Here's the plot. A divorced New Yorker named Elizabeth (Kim Basinger) falls under the sexual spell of a mysteriously cool man named John (Mickey Rourke). They have a lot of sex of varying physical and emotional quality. Elizabeth eventually tires of their unhealthy union and leaves. The end. That's not an awful lot to sink your teeth into, but that's sort of the point. This was an attempt to make a legitimate movie about the sexual relationship between two people without delving into the realms of softcore porn. It basically uses their sexual encounters to tell us who these people are why they bond.
Elizabeth is lonely and stuck inside the degenerate artifice of the New York City art crowd. If John had thinning hair and a beer gut, he'd be an obsessive, controlling pervert. Since he looks like what Mickey Rourke looked like in the mid 80s, he's like a fantasy figure come to life to liberate Elizabeth from her inhibitions. His need to command her and her sexuality at first lets her enjoy parts of herself she would never admit to. Eventually, his need to control expresses itself in more and more deviant behavior and Elizabeth finally rebels in order to hold onto the very awareness that John helped stir in her.
Director Adrian Lyne did a very nice job her, though much of the look and all of the music of the film is about as dated as you can get. There's never any doubt what decade Nine ½ Weeks was made in. The scenes of foreplay and sex here are so stylish and powerful that they've been imitated in the sex scenes of countless movies made after this one. And Lyne effectively compensates for the paucity of plot by immersing the viewer into the rhythm of New York City street life and the adolescent culture of the New York City art world.
Basinger and Rourke are stunningly attractive but neither becomes lost in their respective beauty. Basinger's silkily conveys Elizabeth's journey of self-discovery and Rourke is magnetically quiet and calm. What's best about their work here is that each always lets you see that their character is thinking about the games they're playing with each other and choosing to go forward with them.
Stylish direction powerful performances and a good bit of media sensation weren't enough to make this film a hit. I t became a film in the 80s that a lot of people heard about but not that many saw and there's been very little in the way of high class, mainstream erotica out of Hollywood ever since. What did happen is that co-producer and co-writer Zalman King went out to make a few more erotic films, all dumber and much closer to softcore porn, then made his way into cable TV with Red Shoe Diaries. That was an anthology series that did a more prurient and less sophisticated version of this movie over and over again. It proved their was an audience of middle brow erotica, just not one that would go to the cinema.
I quite liked Nine ½ Weeks. I also liked that Basinger got naked but it spared me any sight of Rourke's ass. If you're looking for a smart and graceful movie about two people getting it on, this is it.