The film was completed in 1984, but did not get released until February 1986. Considered too explicit by its American distributor Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the film was heavily edited for release in the United States,[3] where it was a box office bomb, grossing $6.7 million on a $17 million budget.[4] It also received mixed reviews at the time of its release. However, its soundtrack sold well and the film itself became a huge success internationally in its unedited version, particularly in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, making $100 million worldwide.[2] It has also acquired a large fanbase on video and DVD and has developed a cult following.[5]
Plot
Elizabeth McGraw, an employee at a SoHo art gallery, meets John Gray, a Wall Streetarbitrageur, at a Chinese grocer, and later at a street fair where he buys her an expensive scarf. They start dating, but John's strange behavior escalates, and he gives her an expensive gold watch with instructions to think about him touching her at noon every day. Elizabeth goes further and masturbates at work at the designated time.
Elizabeth wants to introduce John to her friends, but he only wants to see her in the evenings and tells her to see her friends during the day. One evening, she is alone in his apartment and finds a photo of him with another woman named April Tover. When John calls and asks if she went through his things, she admits it. He threatens to punish her, and when he returns home, he orders her to face the wall for a spanking. Elizabeth tries to leave, but the door is locked. John slaps her, she slaps him back, and he rapes her. Despite this, Elizabeth falls in love with John, so she starts to enjoy his dominant behavior and has sex with him on top of a clock tower.
John takes control of all aspects of Elizabeth's life, from what she wears and eats to how he brushes her hair and feeds her. Elizabeth becomes increasingly dependent on John, losing her sense of self. One day, she follows John to work and brings him lunch, telling him she wants to "be one of the guys". John arranges for her to crossdress for a rendezvous at a bar at the Algonquin Hotel, but after the exit they are mistaken for a gay couple and attacked by a group of tramps in an alley. Elizabeth stabs one of the attackers in the buttocks, and they flee. Excited from the incident, Elizabeth declares her love for John, strips, reveals wet informal undergarments, and has passionate sex with him at the scene of the crime.
John starts to make their BDSM-style relationship more apparent in public. He dares her to shoplift a necklace, and she does so. At the bedding section in Bloomingdale's, he asks Elizabeth to "spread your legs for daddy" in front of the saleswoman. At an equestrian store, he whips Elizabeth on the leg with a riding crop and tells the salesman, "I'll take this one." Later that evening, Elizabeth performs a striptease at John's apartment.
Someday after, John asks Elizabeth to crawl and pick up money as he throws it on the floor of his office. Elizabeth initially obliges but then objects, and John takes off his belt, whipping the floor, almost hitting her. Elizabeth cries and protests, but John continues to insist that she crawl and pick up the money. She eventually does so before throwing the money in John's face and declaring that she hates the game.
Elizabeth is confident and sexy at home with John, but she becomes withdrawn at work and thinks about her ex-husband Bruce, who starts dating her co-worker and roommate Molly. She goes to the countryside to visit an elderly artist named Farnsworth and secure an exhibit.
Elizabeth meets John at a room at the Hotel Chelsea and is asked to wear a blindfold. John touches her briefly before a South American sex worker enters the room and caresses Elizabeth as John observes. Elizabeth shows anxiety, and the woman removes her blindfold. John takes the woman to the next room and starts undressing her. Elizabeth intervenes violently and flees with John in pursuit. They end up in an adult entertainment venue where Elizabeth starts kissing the man next to her during a live sex show. John approaches her, and they embrace.
Elizabeth's gallery hosts a successful opening featuring Farnsworth's work. Farnsworth, uncomfortable with the partying crowd, finds Elizabeth in tears in a corner. Elizabeth, dependent on John for emotional stability, calls him while wearing a metal bracelet cuff. The next morning, Elizabeth tries to leave John's apartment, but he tries to convince her to stay by confessing his feelings. Elizabeth leaves anyway, and John begins a mental countdown, thinking she will return before he finishes. Elizabeth instead walks away among the crowd in the street, crying.
Director Adrian Lyne wanted to film an adaptation of Ingeborg Day's novel Nine and a Half Weeks after reading it, but initially felt that it would be impossible to make a studio film about sadomasochism. He directed Flashdance (1983) in order to convince TriStar Pictures to greenlight the film. However, shortly before principal photography began TriStar withdrew from production due to "creative differences" with Lyne, which Lyne alleges was due to pressure from its principal stakeholder The Coca-Cola Company over its content. Filming proceeded with funding from the Producers Sales Organization, and MGM/UA Entertainment Co. agreed to distribute the film in North America after its completion.[6]
Casting
Kim Basinger said the audition was grueling; she was asked to act out a scene from the film wherein her character is made to crawl like a prostitute groveling for money in a sexual game devised by the male protagonist. Basinger said she left the audition crying and feeling humiliated. She told her agent that she never wanted to hear about the film again and would definitely not do it even if she were chosen. When she returned home, she found two dozen roses with a card from Adrian Lyne and Mickey Rourke. Lyne continued to pursue her for the part and eventually she changed her mind and decided to take it on.[7] Lyne refused to conduct rehearsals for Basinger and Rourke so that the interactions between their characters would be their first time meeting in real life.[6]
Filming
The film was shot between April 30, 1984, and August 10, 1984, on location in New York City with a $15 million budget. However, shooting fell two weeks behind schedule at the cost of an additional $500,000 due to constant fighting between Basinger, Rourke, and Lyne. Rourke claimed the tensions between the three worked to the film's advantage by making his and Basinger's characters' on-screen conflicts more convincing, and that Lyne even encouraged it. Lyne used monochromatic film, smoke machines, and grey sets and costumes to imitate the feel of a black-and-white film. He also chose locations around New York where he could film using natural light, including Trinity Church, the Canal Street Flea Market, the Algonquin Hotel, the Café des Artistes, Coney Island, Wall Street, Little Italy, SoHo, Bloomingdale's, Comme des Garçons, and the Chelsea Hotel. Lyne also tried to film at the New York Stock Exchange Building but was refused access due to the film's content.[6]
Post-production
After negative test screenings in the United States and an X rating from the Motion Picture Association of America, MGM removed three minutes from the film's original North American theatrical release. The edits were intended to try to make the audience more sympathetic towards Elizabeth, to emphasize her consent in the affair, and to ensure an R rating. In particular, the scene in which John snaps his belt at Elizabeth and forces her to crawl around the room picking up cash was cut after causing two-thirds of the test audience to leave the theater. This scene was left intact in foreign markets and in later home video releases.[6]
Music
Originally Stewart Copeland was going to compose the film's score, but his involvement ended after Geffen Records deemed the script "offensive."[6]
The main single released from the 9+1⁄2 Weeks: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack was "I Do What I Do", performed by Duran Duran bass guitarist John Taylor, giving his first solo singing performance during a hiatus in Duran Duran's career. The song reached No. 23 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #42 on the UK Singles Chart. Music for the score was composed by Taylor and Jonathan Elias. Original music for the movie was also written by Jack Nitzsche, but his compositions are not included on the soundtrack.
The film was a significant departure from the much darker tone of the novel it is based upon. In Nine and a Half Weeks, John engages in criminal behavior and coerces Elizabeth into committing a violent mugging in an elevator. The book culminates in a quasi-rape scenario that leaves an increasingly permissive Elizabeth in mental anguish, and he takes her to a mental hospital–never to return to her again. The film ends on a somber tone, and there is no mention of the psychiatric breakdown that John inflicted upon her, though her mental anguish is frequently implied, especially near the end of the film.
Release
Theatrical release
The film's release in North America was unsuccessful, earning $3 million in the United States. However, internationally the film was more profitable, earning $17.6 million. The film's box office sales were highly unusual for the time, as major films had typically earned most of their revenue from American audiences. The Producers Sales Organization blamed MGM for the film's underperformance in the United States, arguing that it had been unwilling to market the film due to its controversial subject matter.[6]
Home media
In 1998, MGM Home Entertainment released an "uncut, uncensored version" on DVD that was 117 minutes.[8] The film was released by Warner Home Video on Blu-ray in the United States on March 6, 2012.
Reception
Critical response
9+1⁄2 Weeks has a 60% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 25 reviews. The critical consensus reads: "9 1/2 Weeks' famously steamy sex scenes titillate though the drama unfolding between the beddings is relatively standard for the genre".[9] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C−" on an A+ to F scale.[10]
The film was championed by some critics. Roger Ebert praised the film, giving it three and a half stars out of four, stating: "A lot of the success of 9+1⁄2 Weeks is because Rourke and Basinger make the characters and their relationship convincing". He further elaborated by saying that their relationship was believable, and unlike many other characters in other erotic films at that time, the characters in this movie are much more real and human.[11]
Over time, some critics and audiences have warmed to the film thanks to its success in the rental market. It performed very well in Europe, particularly in Italy, France and also in Latin America. Its success in France was so strong that it played for five years at a Paris cinema, earning approximately $100 million.[12] In São Paulo, Brazil, it played for 30 months in the cult movie house Cine Belas Artes from 1986 to 1989.[13]
