Review of Girlfriend Experience (2008) by Andrew A — 18 Feb 2011

I'm always interested in what Soderbergh is up to with his smaller projects. This was obviously SUPER low-budget, and at times looks absolutely horrendous. This is the Red One at its very worst. Really surprised me because Soderbergh shot Che on the Red and that looked very impressive. I have no idea who his camera operators were on this, but he must have hired some minimum-wage temps or something, because it was absolutely horrendous camerawork.

Anyway, this was a really mixed bag, kind of an experiement by casting Pornstar Sasha Grey as a high-end escort in a film which explores the life of being a sex-worker and how that complicates ones own personal intimate world when your job is in essence providing personal intimacy for other people. Boundaries get blurry.

The movie and story is pretty clumsy, the dialogue focuses a lot on money and economics and politics, the discussions of her clients, which then kind of dissipates into a focus more into her personal life as she kind of finds what I suppose would be "love" or something like it. At least she thinks so. Some of the acting is really bad, but then some of it is brilliant. There is a long single-take scene of Sasha and her 'boyfriend' having a fight over her leaving to spend a weekend with a client that she thinks she is falling for, which is absolutely fantastic. It seems like most of this movie was fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants acting and writing, and this scene has that kind of clumsy improv feel to it, but it also feels very true and very real.

In any case, this is not a titillating film, it takes a very mature perspective throughout. There is not really sex in the movie at all, actually.

Worthy viewing for fans of Soderberg, and as always I support and appreciate his off-beat movie experiments. This is more the "Girlfriend Experiment" than an experience, but while the movie is all kinds of clumsy, there's plenty of nuggets in here. And overall I think Sasha Grey did a really great job playing kind of a version of herself that worked very well in this story.