9 ½ WEEKS

Rip It Up, Issue 112, 1 November 1986, Page 8

9 ½ WEEKS

Director: Adrian Lyne Here is a film that offers an extraordinary glimpse of where our Western society is in 1986 — that is, if New York can still be taken as a microcosm of Western society. Adrian Lyne’s new movie is a study, for want of a better word, of an insecure woman’s domination by a smooth, fast-talking male who subjects her to humiliation after humiliation until, when it comes to crawling around the apartment floor picking up banknotes, she finally rebels. The debasements range from smothering her with various foodstuffs in a culinary raunch session to a tacky scene in which she is virtually raped on the dining table — although, as usual, she eventually acquiesces to even this degradation. Amazingly, this piece of rampant sexism has been written by a woman, even though it seems to reinforce all the basic precepts of male chauvinism. 9Vz Weeks has been widely advertised as one of the most erotic movies ever made — a bold statement, when eroticism is so much in the eye and taste of the beholder — but it would be disturbing to imagine who would get off on the fantasies that 9V2 Weeks offers. What else, then, is going for this film, apart from Peter Biziou’s stunning photography? The characters are on the thin side, Mickey Rourke manag-

ing iittle except a cryptic smile, and Kim Basinger seeming understandably nervous for a good proportion of the film.