Review of The Girlfriend Experience (2009) by Anna B — 26 Oct 2013

This was one of Steven Soderbergh's little, experimental films, shot in two weeks with a Red camera on a very small budget. It's the sort of talky art-house movie that most people would find boring, but I found it kind of fascinating in its toned-down, stripped-down way. It's not for everyone, but if you like movies that run the risk of coming across as pretentious, as I admittedly often do, then it's worth checking out.

The movie doesn't really have a plot. It follows a few days in the life of Chelsea (Sasha Grey), a very expensive prostitute in Manhattan. Part of her price depends on her providing "the girlfriend experience," meaning that she doesn't simply have sex with her clients, but pretends to give them the sort of attention and affection an actual girlfriend would. We see her having lots of dinners in restaurants with clients, and lots of (seemingly) searching conversations with them. We also see her life at home with her actual boyfriend, a personal trainer (Chris Santos), whose relationships with his own clients somewhat parallel those of Chelsea's.

The movie's big casting stunt is that it puts Sasha Grey, who is an actual pornography star, in a legitimate acting role. Perhaps somewhat perversely, the movie casts a porn star as a prostitute and contains no actual sex scenes. And to be honest, while she's not going to suddenly rise to the Hollywood A-list, Sasha Grey does give a pretty admirable performance here. Her character mostly contains a cool, detached facade, but there are a couple of affecting moments where her mask slips ever so slightly. She was the right actress for the part, which is good considering the part was actually written for her. It would be interesting if she continued to have parallel careers in real movies and in porn, but I'm not sure how that's going for her.

Aesthetically, the movie is a good example of how digital filmmaking allows quick, cheap, naturalistic movies. There are a couple of scenes on an airplane with terrible lighting and audio - I'm not sure if that was intentional or just genuine roughness. Many of the scenes do have a cold, modernist composition to them, given the types of settings the movie takes place in. While this movie won't be remembered as the highlight of Soderbergh's career, it may well be the high point of Sasha Grey's.