Dom Robinson reviews
9 ½ Weeks
Distributed by
Fox Video
- Cat.no: 6162W
- Cert: 18
- Running time: 111 mins
- Year: 1986
- Pressing: 1996
- Sound: Dolby Surround
- Widescreen: 1.85:1
- Price: £12.99
Director:
(Indecent Proposal, Jacob's Ladder, Fatal Attraction)
Producers:
Anthony Rufus Isaacs and Zalman King
Screenplay:
Patricia Knop and Zalman King
Music:
Songs in the film include :
- Eurythmics - This City Never Sleeps
- Bryan Ferry - Slave To Love
- Joe Cocker - You Can Leave Your Hat On
- Luba - Let It Go (end credits)
Cast:
John : Mickey Rourke (Angelheart, Wild Orchid)
Elizabeth : Kim Basinger (The Getaway, Too Hot To Handle, My Stepmother Is An Alien)
Molly : Margaret Whitton
Harvey : David Margulies
Farnsworth : Dwight West
Sinclair : Roderick Cook
Bruce : Olek Krupa
In 9 ½ Weeks
Elizabeth works at the Spring Street Gallery which is shortly due to display
a big exhibition for an unknown artist named Farnsworth, and she still thinks
occasionally about her ex-husband, Bruce...that is until she meets John, a
man whom she has no idea what he does for a living, but that he earns more
than enough money.
He eyes her from the local market, and woos her at first by buying an expensive
shawl for her that she had her eye on there but couldn't afford.
Within a short space of time, Elizabeth is embroiled in a passionate affair
in which John wants her to submit to his every whim however perverted it seems
from the famous food scene, later parodied in "Hot Shots!" to dressing up as
a man in a restaurant, and beyond what she could possibly imagine as some of
John's desires go further than she had anticipated...
If you haven't seen the film before, it's worth checking out to see what all
the fuss was about ten years ago, and director Adrian Lyne makes more of the
less animated scenes with expert direction.
For this tenth anniversary edition, it would have been nice for the theatrical
trailer to have been included but it wasn't.
The digitally remastered print is quite a clean one, but on the whole looks
a little soft, although that could have been the way it was filmed to benefit
the look of the sex scenes. One or two of the other scenes look a little grainy
though.
The sound quality is superb with top tunes from yesteryear blasting out
during some of the scenes which no doubt would have been edited on terrestrial
television.
The sleeve claims a 1.85:1 ratio, but although it looks a little less than that,
the film was probably shot flat and masked for cinema presentation. Therefore
with the widescreen version while some picture will be lost at the top and
bottom of the screen, some more side information will also be gained. The
reverse will apply to the fullscreen version, but of course the widescreen
version will be the way the director intended the picture to be.
Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 1996.
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connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
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