Oh yes! Oh yes! Oh my God, no!

I know Independent on Sunday readers to be mature and sophisticated types who demand answers to all of life's big questions. So, is 9 Songs the most sexually graphic mainstream film ever granted a cinema release in Britain? Oh my gosh, yes. Blimey, and how.

I know Independent on Sunday readers to be mature and sophisticated types who demand answers to all of life's big questions. So, is 9 Songs the most sexually graphic mainstream film ever granted a cinema release in Britain? Oh my gosh, yes. Blimey, and how.

Over the past decade it has been my onerous duty to watch each and every pretender to the "most explicit" title - The Idiots, Romance, Intimacy etc - and these predecessors have but waved their willies on the lowest foothills of pump and grind action by comparison to director Michael Winterbottom's in-your-face humping. The relationship at the centre of the film is viewed entirely through the pair's coupling, apart from the musical interludes referred to in the film's title, where the couple pogo around at super-cool live gigs for bands such as Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, The Von Bondies and Elbow.

Let me entreat you not to see this film with your long-suffering spouse of many years, when you've both got filthy colds and your infant son is wrestling with the coal scuttle. There's nothing more mournful than watching attractive, trim young people go at it like frenzied ferrets when you're hacking up phlegm and a good night's action means your baby only wakes twice. The erotic charge of one scene of early morning kitchen frottage was dissipated by my husband shouting at the love birds, "My god, woman, please let that poor man make breakfast for once!" And he got annoyed at me constantly asking, "Is that Franz Ferdinand?" My husband also moaned at regular intervals, "I just don't find watching people having sex that interesting." Yet somehow he forced himself to hang on in there. He's a noble man, my husband.

But is it art - or even enjoyable? Well, that all depends. If you're the sort of modish urbanite who snorts the odd line, loves Primal Scream and enjoys an uninhibited sex life with the beautiful people, then I think this movie will tick most of your sensory boxes. I had the feeling that watching 9 Songs in my Cambridge living room en famille was like trying to like rave music without dropping the Es. But I won't be surprised if the critics pan it. This will partly be because they'll compare the film to Buñuel, rather than Ben Dover, and I'm not sure that's the right criterion. But it will also be because most hacks are permanently disappointed, troll-like creatures, who only get laid when they and some boot-faced colleague are drunk as skunks. Plus male critics may not appreciate the fact that Kieran O'Brien has what was once known in some circles as "an enormous schlong". Meanwhile, female critics will resent Margot Stilley's so-thin-it's-translucent body, but this will translate as castigating the director for putting a "vulnerable" naked 21-year-old under the camera's glare. It seemed to me that Stilley was perfectly happy to disport her perfect, taut bottom and exquisite little vulva in front of the lens - but I may be proved wrong when she's found on a street corner sans knickers saying, "Ready for my close-up, Mr Winterbottom."

My main caveat with Stilley was her aggravating US drawl, which sounded more model than actress. Every time she said, "Fuck me!", I expected her to add, "the new fragrance from Calvin Klein". Winterbottom says 9 Songs is primarily "a love story", but O'Brien and Stilley are less Sutherland and Christie in Don't Look Now (cinema's undisputed top erotic coupling of all time) than stylish young ships that dock in the night. The viewer's emotional involvement is necessarily stymied by the fact you know almost nothing about him and far less about her. The one thing we do know is she's on "prescription pills". The film follows the European cinematic tradition (à la Betty Blue) for a brooding, questing male to shack up with some mysterious nymphomaniac, who then turns out to be completely bonkers.

Just once I'd like to see a beautiful woman be both lustful and sane on screen. But my gripes are far less than my admiration for Winterbottom at getting this artfully structured, undeniably authentic and intermittently compelling shag-fest past the censor. A must-see for maiden aunts, girl guides, and the lunatics of Christian Voice.