9½ Weeks
ナインハーフ
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
A Wall Street trader and a gallery assistant; the refrigerator scene taught a generation what an erotic thriller was.
Elizabeth McGraw, divorced and working at a SoHo art gallery, keeps crossing paths with John Gray, a Wall Street arbitrageur: first at a Chinese grocer's, then at a flea market, where he buys her the expensive shawl she had admired. They begin an affair that quickly becomes a game whose rules he sets. He blindfolds her. He gives her a gold watch and tells her to think of him touching her at noon every day, and she does. He will see her only in the evenings, and tells her to see her friends by day.
When she looks through his things and finds a photograph of him with another woman, he says she will be punished. He locks the door, they strike each other, and he forces sex on her. Even so, she falls in love with him, and for a while she enjoys giving up control. He decides what she wears and eats, brushes her hair and feeds her, and she grows dependent on him and loses her sense of herself. He dresses her as a man for a drink at the Algonquin; afterwards, taken for a gay couple, they are attacked in an alley and fight their way out. He dares her to shoplift a necklace, and she does. Then he throws money on the floor and orders her to crawl for it, threatening to beat her. She does it in tears, then throws the money in his face and says she hates the game.
She withdraws at work. In a room at the Chelsea Hotel he blindfolds her and brings in a sex worker; when he starts undressing the woman, Elizabeth hits him and runs, and he follows her to a sex show, where they embrace. Her gallery opens a show by Farnsworth, an elderly painter she travelled to the country to sign, and the old man finds her crying in a corner. She spends one more night with John. In the morning she packs. He tries to keep her, talking about his family for the first time, but she reminds him that it was always going to end when one of them said stop. As she goes, he starts counting, hoping she will come back before he finishes. She walks away through the crowded streets, crying.
Starring
Kim Basingeras Elizabeth McGraw
A divorced SoHo gallery assistant who falls into an affair whose rules are set entirely by her lover.
Elizabeth McGraw’s story
When John buys Elizabeth the shawl, she lets him set the rules: the blindfold, the gold watch that tells her to think of him at noon, evenings only. When she looks through his things, he locks the door, they strike each other and he forces sex on her; she falls in love with him anyway, and lets him choose what she wears and eats. She shoplifts on his dare and, crying, crawls for his money before throwing it in his face. At work she withdraws. At the Chelsea Hotel she hits John and runs. At the opening of the show she has secured for Farnsworth, he finds her crying in a corner. After one last night with John, she packs, reminds him it would end when one of them said stop, and walks away in tears.
Mickey Rourkeas John Gray
A Wall Street arbitrageur who takes control of every part of Elizabeth's life and pushes his games further and further.
John Gray’s story
John meets Elizabeth twice by chance, buys her the shawl she wanted and makes the rules: he blindfolds her, gives her a gold watch and tells her to think of him touching her at noon, sees her only in the evenings. When she goes through his things he says she will be punished, locks the door and forces sex on her. He chooses her clothes and feeds her, dares her to shoplift, dresses her as a man for a drink, and throws money on the floor, threatening to beat her until she crawls for it. At the Chelsea Hotel he brings in a sex worker. On the last morning he tries to keep her by talking, for the first time, about his family; as she goes, he counts to fifty, hoping she will come back. She does not.
Margaret Whittonas Molly
Elizabeth's colleague and flatmate, who starts going out with Elizabeth's ex-husband, Bruce.
Dwight Weistas Matthew Farnsworth
An elderly painter living in the country, whose exhibition Elizabeth secures and who finds her in tears at the opening.
Why it matters
9½ Weeks is about a relationship in which one person makes every rule, and about the point at which surrender stops being a choice. Elizabeth enjoys giving up control until the games turn into humiliation and threat, and the film ends not with punishment or rescue but with her walking out in tears, having said stop. How much of it she wanted is a question the film's own distributor tried to settle in the edit. After an X rating and poor test screenings, MGM cut three minutes from the North American release to make her more sympathetic and her consent clearer; the scene of her crawling for money went after two-thirds of one test audience walked out. The film took $3 million in the United States but did far better abroad, and one Paris cinema showed it for five years. What stays open is where a game two people agree to becomes control that one of them has to escape.