The Girlfriend Experience

Last week I went to see Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience. This is Soderbergh's second recent attempt to take a tiny film with no major stars and make it great. And it was much more successful than 2006's Bubble, which mostly succeeded it making me uncomfortable.

The GF Experience tells the tale of a very high-end escort played by adult film star Sasha Grey. It focuses on her character Christine/Chelsea (real name/work name), but also follows her real boyfriend in a somewhat parallel story line. The story is woven in a very non-linear pattern, jumping around and showing you things that don't necessarily make sense in the order they are presented, by generally make sense by the time the film ends (a mere 77 minutes later).

The parallel story shows both Chelsea and her boyfriend at work (he's a personal trainer), dealing with clients, and trying to be better business people. Chesea spends her days as more than just a woman who gets paid for sex. She dresses up, goes out to dinner or movies, and generally spends time with her clients, sometimes purely listening to them talk about what ails them. Hence the title of the film.

Most of the reviews I read mention that the film is set in the fall of '08 in the middle of our economic downfall and heated presidential race, however none of the reviews discuss that this element is the very crux of the story we are presented with. In fact, I think the "point" of the film can be summed up in a very early scene where Chelsea is visiting with one of her wealthy clients. They're sitting in bed. She is silent as usual, while the client goes on and on about his job and money and the fact that his business is being raped by this horrible economy.

And he's paying her $2000 an hour to have this conversation with her.

So while the film was definitely about her, and mostly about her inability to have a real personality, there's this other major player involved: America. And our fucked up priorities.

Other things that I liked:

Sasha Grey's body. Not being an avid porn watcher, I've never seen her before and was pleasantly surprised to see that she's totally real looking. Her tits aren't huge and her ass is a little big. And she's totally hot.

Sasha Grey's acting. Another pleasant surprise. She pulled it off well. There was only one scene where she truly fell flat, involving an argument she has with her boyfriend.

The filmmaking. Duh. Soderbergh has quite the eye.

And of course the film ended on a total "WTF" moment, as I had suspected it would since I know how Bubble ended. In fact, Bubble ended right when I thought it was actually getting good.

So...I have no snazzy ending for this post.