Review of Girlfriend Experience (2008) by Jonas J — 24 Jun 2009

Throughout The Girlfriend Experience, Steven Soderbergh elicits an authenticity debate between the viewer and his scrambled image sets, which are presented in an unchronological yet steadily unfurling and premeditated order. The film is preconfigured as an "art house experience," immediately juxtaposing lingering guitar ambience with polarizing camerawork and fragments of inanimate objects in luxurious, pristine but empty spaces in upper-class Manhattan lofts. These sterile and hollow spaces aid the establishment of the physical and metaphorical distance between characters. Although "call girl" Chelsea (played by Sasha Grey) provides an intimate experience with each of her clients and documents every detail on her computer, her clients do not seek a genuine rapport but instead demand a simulation of their inner desires. While attending a lunch with esteemed journalist Mark, Chelsea reveals "in the end, they want what they want you to be," yet she does not possess an absolute identity (furthered mystified by her "Christine" alias). And this is just a singular example of many in the film where a character is confronted by the overwhelming inquiry, "what is real?".

An interesting parallel is drawn between everyday conversation and the interplay that constitutes "the girlfriend experience" (where a prostitute poses as a john's girlfriend), because there is no truth in any form of communication in the film. It is Soderbergh's intent to paint a kind of corporate dread where everything is conducted as a business transaction; "life is for sale, and nothing is sacred." This notion is augmented by egocentric political discussion of the bailouts of financial institutions prior to the 2008 election, the failing economy, personal financial independence, and sheer lifestyle excess of American high society. Nearly every character has some form of drab epiphany in reaction to their elevated fear and insecurities. As one of Chelsea's clients comments, everyone must keep "enough (money) to maintain what they're used to.".

The film's desolate core becomes progressively disorienting and nearly paralyzing, evidenced by irregular scene breaks and reexaminations, frequency of lingering silences in-between dialogue, and rather unforeseen fixations of lamps or hanging lights in soft focus. Yet even from the opening minutes, there's an enormous sense of disconnection. In the restaurant, particularly, the blocking pushes the characters into the background of the frame while the foreground showcases a large decorative water fountain with candles floating in it. It's this image that primarily sets the film up as a dissociative experience. However, despite this inherent approach, there's an intimacy in the director's occasional intrusive camerawork, which is devoted to the intense close-ups of facial expressions, initially apparent with Chelsea in a taxi. Though she attempts to veil herself behind an oversized pair of designer sunglasses, perhaps Soderbergh is trying to break through to the characters' humane qualities and subliminally remind audiences that his characters are still human even if they mechanically and artificially subsist. The Girlfriend Experience is calculatedly bleak and chaotic despite its poetically restrained nature, and that authentic discipline in effect instills a lingering power in the minds of its viewers.