9 and a half weeks

Year of release : 1986

Run time : 1h57m

Genre : Romance / Drama / Erotic

Cast : Mickey Rourke, Kim Basinger

The movie is based on the 1978 memoir of the same name, by Ingerborg Day under the surname Elizabeth McNeill.

Elizabeth McGraw works at an art gallery where she seems to be appreciated by her colleagues.

One day, shopping with her colleague and roommate, she sees John Gray, an arbitrageur, and she keeps on staring at him while her roommate is looking for a cab.

On a different occasion, Elizabeth is looking through the items at a flea market, and wants to buy a French shawl, the buyer wants to sell for 300 dollars. She moves along and buys a chicken toy which lays eggs. John sees her, and buys the shawl, approaching her after.

They go on a date where they play awful music, and talk about boring things. Leaving, he gives her the shawl. He takes her to a friend’s house-boat, and starts fixing the bed, making her say he’s kinda cocky, thinking he’s gonna get some, and is asking him to take her home after he says some things, scaring her.

While at work, John sends her flowers.

They go on a date, at a carnival, and he asks the man handling one of the rides, to leave her on top of the ride, while they leave to get a coffee! She is a bit upset with him, but ends up kissing him after. These are honestly ,the way they behave, especially him, kid antics!

They are stopped on the street by a group of kids who ask for 5 dollars to hear one of them fart! Why is this scene in the movie?!

Elizabeth takes him to her place, where they listen to her voice messages, and she tells him the obvious, whenever someone left a voice message, about who that is, although they already tell her who they are!

John wants to blindfold her, and although she doesn’t want to, he does, and plays with ice cubes on her body.

On another occasion John takes her to his place, where she sees he has a lot of tvs, so she blabbers about it. He gifts her a watch she loves (to me it looked random), and tells her to think about him everyday at noon. She does, and one day she masturb@tes while watching work related pictures, thinking about him.

Elizabeth takes him to her place, and he feeds her a lot of food which doesn’t go together, including hot peppers, pours honey on her and sprays her with, I hope, champagne. This scene was f@cking disgusting to me! By the way, all this after she bathed, while he was at her place, and so far, I didn’t see them doing the nasty.

While having dinner, she invites him to a party to meet her friends, but he refuses, saying he doesn’t want to meet anyone, he just wants to be with her. He asks her to see her friends on daytime, and spend her night time with him. He gets a phone call and leaves her in his apartment, time in which she goes through his clothes.

He calls and asks her if she snooped around, and she confesses she did.

When he comes back he tells her to face the wall because he’ll spank her for going through his things. She wants to leave, enraged, but he slaps her, and takes off her clothes, ripping off her underwear, and r@pes her. I guess it wasn’t r@pe for she didn’t say No, and liked it.

As she sleeps, he chooses clothes for her to wear, and she does. He doesn’t care if he likes the suit he bought her.

 

She goes by his office, and he takes her out, and she says she wonders what’s like to be a man, wearing a suit. So he gets her a suit with a mustache, she has to wear to a restaurant he takes her to.

Going home, she snaps at a taxi driver and 2 men follow them to the subway, and they end up fighting, while they’re playing an upbeat song!!!

After they run away, she tells John she loves him, and they end up having s3x outside, on the staircase!

While at a jewelry store, he tells her to steal the neckline with the medallion, so she does. They end up at a furniture store, and he is pretending to buy the bed, and is asking her to lie on the bed and spread her legs while the seller is there.. these are grown people, and act like kids!

The movie bored me, and I found the male lead annoying and a major red flag. He is leaving her on a carnival ride, at the top (if a man did that to me that would be the last time he sees me), then feeds her hot peppers, even after she spits it out, he tries again, trailing it on her lips. Do you know how hot pepper feels on the lips? He likes to feed her a lot, which annoys me. He’s always holding his glass for her to drink or feeds her food, and brushes her hair. It’s like he wants to have a kid not a woman!

She sucks his thumb while at some bar, I could only think of how dirty his hands must have been!

Somewhere in between the feeding and the thumb sucking, he leaves her at his place, probably on purpose, playing some mind game, and when he comes back, he threatens to spank her, telling her to stand against the wall, and when she wants to leave, lashing out, he slaps her, and r@pes her!

He has this a$hole behavior, but she keeps on taking it, dating him, and falling for him when there’s nothing to fall for.

SPOILERS He asks her to crawl on her hands and knees to pick up the money he throws on the floor (this, by the way, was the scene Kim Basinger had to play at the audition, and she was quoted as saying she felt humiliated, and didn’t want to play in the movie anymore, but the director and Mickey Rourke convinced her in the end).He gets angry because she doesn’t want to do it, and gets his belt out, threatening to beat her with it. First of all, he has serious temper issues, second, it’s like he thinks her a kid who needs to be disciplined.

He wants her to always obey him, which is annoying. He even asks her to meet him at a hotel and brings her a prostitute (she was annoying with her purring). END OF SPOILER

Why oh, why, movies of this genre, old or new, always suck? They always have bad dialogue and stupid scenes in which nothing happens or they just do stupid things, it’s just boring!

This movie is a star and a half at best!

The dialogue was bad.

The s3x scenes were not impressive. I found them quite bad, actually.

There’s this striptease scene which he’s supposed to watch, but she seems to be walking around the whole house, I don’t think he can see her!

The acting was fine, but the actors look like they just met and are awkward with each other, causing discomfort. The two leads were beautiful, Mickey Rourke was gorgeous when he was young, before the plastic surgery.

I didn’t like the soundtrack, except for the songs “Slave to love” and “You can leave your hat on”.

The movie received mixed reviews, with a score of 50 from the critics and 5.6 from the audiences on Metacritic, and a 58% rating from critics and 55% from the audience on Rotten Tomatoes.

Cinema Score audiences graded the movie a C-.

The movie grossed 100 million at the box office, against a budget of 17 million dollars, being a hit, but it bombed in the USA, grossing only 6.7 million dollars!

 

The movie was filmed in early 1984, but was released in February 1986 due to its explicit content.

Apparently, the book was much darker, with Elizabeth ending up in the mental institution and John leaving her there.

Viewer discretion is advised, as the movie contains nudity from Kim Basinger.

You can watch the full movie for free, on the Ok.Ru platform.

Rating : Shoulda Woulda Coulda !