According to Moviefone -- and they would know, I suppose -- this week marks the 25th anniversary of Adrian Lyne's much-maligned "9 1/2 Weeks," the prototypically soft-core kink flick and quintessential 80's artifact that launched a thousand tepid imitators. It jump-started Kim Basinger's career and marked the first of a long series of lamentable missteps for the then-promising Mickey Rourke. Ultimately, it's a fairly hollow vessel -- a stylishly-wrapped present without much inside to recommend it. In his article for Moviefone, writer Gary Susman cites five reasons why the film has had a lasting effect. For the most part, I agree with Gary (I'll let you click on over there if you care). But I think he's forgotten a crucial element.
Despite it's inarguable dearth of significant substance, "9 1/2 Weeks" is an elegantly stylish love-letter not just to Kim Basinger's curves, but to New York City. Like a clutch of other films of its era -- notably Tony Scott's equally-masturbatory-but-still-far-superior vampire flick, "The Hunger" --- "9 1/2 Weeks" depicts NYC with artful panache, rather starkly contrasting the NYC films of a decade earlier like "Marathon Man," "French Connection," "Panic in Needle Park" and "The Taking of Pelham 123." Those films portrayed New York City as caked in a patina of greasy soot, whereas so many shots in "9 1/2 Weeks" -- from locations in the Village to Coney Island to the Chelsea Hotel and SoHo -- make the city look positively enchanted.
Don't get me wrong -- it's still a botched endeavor and a squirm-inducing portrayal of smug misogyny at the end of the day. Lyne would replicate the formula with more commercially-successful results a couple of years later with "Fatal Attraction," which also features some stylish shots of Manhattan.
For all its flaws, though, I still kinda dig "9 1/2 Weeks." Give it another shot and see if you agree. Here's a small taste of what I'm talking about.
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