Known for being sexually explicit and for having a lengthy sex-with-food sequence (lampooned in the arguably better film HOT SHOTS!), NINE 1/2 WEEKS stars Kim Basinger as a New York City art dealer who falls in love with a Wall Street guy (Mickey Rourke). Rourke plays mind (and sex) games with Basinger to the point that she starts to lose parts of herself and transform into what basically amounts to a sex slave, coerced into doing things that alternatively humiliate and empower her by Rourke's emotionally manipulative mood swings between intense intimacy and detached coldness.
Sound familiar? Methinks E.L. James of FIFTY SHADES OF GREY fame might have seen this flick.
So, since Lyne directed both FLASHDANCE and this flick, let's use FLASHDANCE as an example to measure this film against. I feel like this movie and FLASHDANCE are kind of opposites. For example, where technicaly wizardry is the strength of FLASHDANCE, it's the weakness here. This movie, perhaps in spite of itself, actually does have characters and story going for it. I'm not sure how much of this is actually from the screenplay and how much of it is from Basinger and Rourke turning in three dimensional performances. Maybe it's both.
In any case, I feel like the real stuff is undercut by the slick Hollywood style of the flick. For instance, there's a sequence in which Basinger and Rourke go for a night on the town with Basinger dressed as a dude. That's fine, whatever. But! They run afoul of some people on the street who take exception to their apparently homosexual tryst, end up on the run, and find themselves in a dark alley with homeless people (or something) and in the middle of a knife fight. After all that, they make mad passionate love in the rain, in the alley, etc. The problem is, it looks like it's shot on a set with perfect lighting. It doesn't look like two people banging in a dirty alley. So it's like, who cares if they get turned on by a knife fight and bang in an alley if the alley looks like the cover of a romance novel. Where's the danger? What's the point?
So, the best stuff in the movie is not visual, it's in the emotions and the minds of the characters. And for the most part, this is fine. Basinger has her shit together enough to tell Rourke to fuck off every now and then, so at least it's not a totally unbelievable relationship. And Rourke hints both that he likes Basinger more than he lets on and that he has some emotional trauma he's dealing with, so he's not just a robot monster.
Still, the way the story's told you have to wonder about a couple sequences. For instance, early on when Basinger and Rourke hardly know each other he takes her to an amusement park and then pays a carny to let Basinger ride the ferris wheel alone and then strand her at the top of the ferris wheel. After that, both the carny and Rourke walk away, leaving Basinger screaming for help and obviously unhappy with the situation. I realize in the context of the movie this is one of Rourke's mind games. But, it's so extreme and so out of nowhere and so early on and Basinger freaks out so much you have to wonder why the relationship even progresses after that. Like, at that point, Rourke's just being a dick. He's not being all charming and mysterious. He's just being a dick.
Still, once you get by that weird scene and roll your eyes at the various montages, there is some interesting stuff going on with the push and pull between Rourke trying to control Basinger and Basinger sometimes giving in and sometimes not. It would have been even more interesting if the movie would have been willing to follow the characters down darker and grittier paths, but it didn't. So instead it's just weird.
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