9½ Weeks: When Sexuality went Beyond the Cinema
Adrian Lyne’s 9½ Weeks is 1986’s addition to the Theatrical world. It came in with a bang. It was alluring, it was controversial. While a certain section of the audience watched it as a movie with a deep story, a lot of this audience divided the movie as an erotica with a touch of form. While a lot of folk argued, the soft and underlying anchors to the frame, main actors to the fifty edges of the movie, Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger stitched more than soft fiction. Their weaknesses realistically captured the actors.
A Love Story That Felt Like a Game of Fire
The movie follows Elizabeth, the main character. She works as an assistant to an arts gallery. From the start, romance works differently. It works as a rollercoaster. At the top of the ride, she meets Evan, and he is a Wall Street broker. As mesmerized as she is, he is the controversial broker. As each moment, he plays the broker and puts a tiny bit of a collar, the storm of feelings with each passing moment, jealousy, love, and obsession, they further enclose over the heat of the moment.
In ‘In the Realm of the Senses,’ the relationship burns for over nine and a half weeks like a candle too close to its flame. Elizabeth allows herself and gives into surrender, oscillating between the pleasures of surrender and the fears of emotional erosion. The act of walking away is an act of self preservation. Scarred but, in a sense awakened, the reality is that Elizabeth’s silence speaks, and carries more value than any potential dialogue ever could.
For Indian audiences who tap into the film through cable in the ‘90, and even through pirated VHS tapes, the film is much more than titillation. We can draw parallels to depictions in Indian cinema of love as a possession, the price that needs to be paid for desire, and a woman’s geopolitical struggle to make sense of herself after someone who tried to entirely consume her.
Mickey Rourke: The Man Behind the Mask
Rourke describes the character of Joh to be, ‘charming, and enigmatic, but also is a double edged sword since he can also be dangerous and difficult to understand.’ He also goes on to say that this kind of aura is not an act, instead is a summary of the life he lived. It can be said that in the 1980’s, he had a reputation for being both self destructive as well as an unpredictably, difficult person to be around. Movies such as ‘Diner’, and ‘Rumble Fish’ were the foundations to his claim as being hailed a more raw Brando.
Within the temporal bounds of 9½ Weeks, Rourke was struggling on a deeply personal level while alternating between chaos and stardom. His portrayal of John was neither balanced nor polished; without a clear starting point, he descended into turbulence. Numerous people remarked that the cold detachment Rourke displayed on the screen was matched by an off-screen restlessness that was anything but calm. He would go on to say that he did not always understand the movie, but was aware of how to embody a character that was deeply disconnected and used control to masquerade his deep vulnerability.
Rourke’s later career collapse, which involves him walking away from Hollywood to become a boxer, suffering serious injuries, and making a struggling attempt to resurface, feels like a dire offshoot of John’s weakness. Rourke, similarly to John who conceals his pain behind aggressive domination, Rourke concealed his insecurities behind a foolish and reckless image. His eventual redemption that came in the form of The Wrestler (2008) was a testament equally to the bruised heart that John possessed, concealed beneath manipulative tears.
Kim Basinger: Shedding the Doll Image
Kim Basinger was still in the process of establishing her reputation and earning respect in the industry, and that was exactly the case when she was cast to play the role of Elizabeth. During that time, and even before, the general public was aware of Basinger’s stunning beauty and professional modeling career, but did not recognize her as a serious actress. Adrian Lyne was the one who brought her to these emotionally bare and raw positions, in most scenarios, to pretend that she was Elizabeth.
Basinger, along with Rourke, revealed that the filming placed them both in a position of unease. Throughout the duration of filming, their relationship appeared to be frosty, and their conversations off the set were superficial at best. This disharmony transformed into a source of Elizabeth’s capacity for anxiety and hesitance as well as her ability to be both attracted to John and repulsed by him. This tension transformed into motivation for the character.
Basinger showed that she was more than a “glamour girl” when she displayed fragility, depth, and courage. However, this acting role also appeared to be her downfall. It was the beginning of her downfall as long as she was seen through the prism of suggestiveness. My later career, as well as that of L.A. Confidential in which an Oscar was won in 1997, can be traced to the re capturing of a personal narrative after she was blindsided by the rest of the world and the men who defined her. After winning the Oscar, I was able to shed the narrative that was defined by the male gaze.
The Making: Secrets, Board Games, and Tension with the Director
Adrian Lyne believed that the true intention for capturing each scene in 9 ½ Weeks was to divide the tension equally. He believed that “real” tension would create authentic performances. He along with Basinger and Rourke would remain at an emotional distance.
Reflecting on the previous work, the acting was devoid of any worth. Basinger admitted that the filming at times felt exploitative and disregarded her ease. Nevertheless, the outcome was indisputable. The exploitation of her face, along with the mixture of excitement and dread in her body language, was authentic and not an act.
Another courteous strip of the censor was the footage. The buzz was that s\he original snippet was more pornographic than the glass and cut pieces. Although the ending had been trimmed, none of the pieces were added so the film didn’t receive an X- rating when released in the US. The humorous twist in this story was that the unedited copies gained fame in Europe, and the rest of the world.
From not being able to pay the bills to an “International Cult Classic”.
When released in the US, the Box Office was worthless. The reviews were ruthless, claiming the work was unoriginal and exploitative. However, the film gained lots of fame in France and Italy, where it was regarded with respect. The European fame changed the film and turned it into an international cult classic.
The reputation of the film preceded it; for cinema lovers in India during the late 80s and early 90s, it was regarded with hushed reverence and shadowy attention whenever it popped up. Like priceless contraband, it was deemed a sin to watch. People were, however, willing to overlook the scandal in favor of the sweeping sadness it epitomized. The gripping romance disproportionate to the sadness; the courage to move on. The realities of the time were such, that women’s freedom on screen was nearly non-existent, thus, the film’s ending with the woman leaving was rather powerful; a statement hidden in a romance.
The Legacy of a Nine-Week Affair.
And now, 9½ Weeks is no longer just an erotic drama; it is a cultural point of reference. The film is notorious for the scene in which food is served. Elizabeth, wearing a blindfold, is fed honey, peppers, and strawberries by John, which has now been carved in stone in the annals of cinema. Countless works in the fashion industry, music videos, and many commercials have been inspired by this scene.
Entertainment, however, has a much greater significance in how it reflected the actors. Rourke’s woe and charm, Basinger’s gentle power, and Lyne’s cunningly domineering direction; all blended to form a film that feels more authentic than a mere performance. Each of these personas represents human feeling in a story of devastation and desire, and seems to battle the same emotions tangled in their lives.
9½ Weeks is just as ephemeral as its title suggests. On and off screen, it is an intense episode that illuminated a chapter in time and space, and then, ssssppppp, silence. It is this quality that allows it to linger, decades later, as if it were a memory that has stricken you for far too long.
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