The Girlfriend Experience

Here in Australia there is an extraordinary statistic which tells us that the majority of students at the biggest university in the country work in the sex industry. You see, study is expensive. Who wants to slave away at McDonald's for hours after class to buy books and pay off student loans when you can make ten times that much for a fraction of the time spent? There is obviously an interesting movie to be made here. This is not that movie. I knew a girl who paid her way through law school by working as an escort. Any one of her stories about "clients" would be more interesting than this.

As the title implies, Chelsea/Christine, the main character, is an escort who also goes out on dates with her clients. She also meets regularly with a journalist who is apparently writing an article about her. This is funny, because as either Christine or Chelsea, the prostitute alter ego, this woman doesn't say a single interesting thing throughout the entire movie. The only interesting characters are the "clients", and yet they're paying Chelsea for her time, not just for sex.

It is tempting to critique Sasha Grey's performance, but the script doesn't give her much to do right, let alone wrong. It's a one note character, and a one note performance.

"The Girlfriend Experience" also refrains from making any kind of statement about this strange, shocking situation that so many students are in now. It's just Chelsea visiting different men.

It has occurred to me that the repetition of these scenes makes it deliberately confusing as to who the men are. At first, you assume they are all clients Chelsea is servicing. Then, you realise that Chelsea is Christine with some, one is a boyfriend, the other is a journalist interviewing her. Is the point that for someone in Christine's situation, men are interchangeable, and it is hard to tell clients from spouses? This is not the way any of the real-life sex workers I have heard from describe their work and private lives, but hey, I'll take meaning where I can get it.

A brilliant little film, economic in its resources and smart in its complex editing. However, this is not destined to be a box office hit. It is the kind of film that Soderbergh does once in a while in-between pop flicks to avoid getting bored.

Sasha Grey delivers some good acting as an ambiguously shallow and ambitious prostitute who tries to survive the post-Obama post-Crisis world of depressed clients and worried boyfriend. Her relationship with her costumers and other professionals who are part of the escort world is built little by little in several out-of-order scenes. Most people will find the movie's timeline confusing, but all you have to do is pay attention to her wardrobe and everything will be fine.

I must also note the soundtrack, that makes use of very interesting unknown music. I specially liked the street drummer.

The images are beautiful enough to make one think "well, not bad for a movie shot on digital". Besides the old-school narrative (in the sense that it belongs more to the Bergman era than to the "Wolverine III" era) this movie looks and feels like the new kind of cinema that cheap digital shooting offers. And I like the way it feels.

IN A NUTSHELL: For Sasha Grey and Soderbergh fans and people who actually care about cinema language. If you like Soderbergh because of "Ocean's Eleven", stay away.

This film gets a 5/10 from me because mostly it was in focus and not too hostile to the viewer.

That said, let me start at the end, and say that I was at once relieved that the tedium was over, and annoyed that almost no story had been told, no character really developed. It doesn't even qualify as an abstractly artistic experience.

Soderbergh is by no means my favourite director, but he has been responsible for some at least competent film-making in the past, which is why I went to see this film, in addition to the subject sounding interesting.

But I am just shocked not to be able to find anything good to recommend this film except that it's in focus, and you can identify a main character or two. The sound, cinematography, and editing are otherwise among the worst I've ever experienced. The story just barely exists. In a way, the film is worth seeing just to see how not to make a film.

I could go on about what I wish had been different, but really, what's the point? It's beyond repair.

I will say it's better than Last Days by Gus Van Sant. If you liked that, you'll probably love this.

OK, somewhere between 1 and 5.. Look, I'm a fairly big Soderbergh fan, Solaris - perfect!, Kafka (where can I buy this now!!), Sex Lies., The Good German and etc.. But what the heck was this movie? I was waiting during the entire movie for the "it's about to get interesting", it has to get interesting because the acting sucks.. right?.. "it's just about to get.. " nope. It never was interesting. And oh I had high hopes for Sasha, not that I know who she is because I had to look her up on Google. But because I love to root for the underdog - thinking just maybe a porn star really could break into mainstream. Oh right, that kinda sorta did happen once from that porn star from the 80's Traci lords.

Despite how 'high brow' Sasha is supposed to be, she was anything but barely interesting during the entire movie. I'm not sure if it was her acting or the script. Hard to tell.

Seriously, this is bad indie at best. It was almost like it was trying to be an indie film, but Sasha Grey didn't have really any interesting lines, she just sat there with uninteresting (understatement) responses. She did cry well, that was about the most challenging part - again the script.

Too bad, I thought this was going to be good by reading those reviews on the box (ah, suckered in by the reviews again!),

I never write reviews about anything. I had to sign up for IMDb just to write this. :) Other than this film, however, Soderbergh rocks, and Sasha Grey probably could act if challenged. She is certainly interesting to look at both in the screen charisma sense and in the other sense.

Well, it was only 5 bucks at BB and 2 hours of my time.

New York City glamour, extremely real acting and scenarios followed by CNN circa 2008 mumbo-jumbo, annoyingly flashy cinematography, and wanna-be American Psycho depravity-in-materialism preaching. Rarely do it want to shut off a movie every five minutes, and if so, even more rarely do I find something to respect in the next five.

As to Sasha Grey and her acting abilities, I think she's OK at it. Many reviews scathe her for "deadpan", but I think that's what high-class dumb sluts actually are probably like. Pretty much empty. Making the most of what god gave them in a depraved way. To me it seems real. The "hooker's boyfriend" character was great, which is hard to pull off in my mind. I really empathized with this guy in a weird situation.

What's not real are the characters of many, though not all, of the "rich assholes". That's about as eloquent as Soderberg is with these characters, "They're just rich assholes" when "the rest of us are hurting" as we are reminded again, and again, and again.

The script and plot line isn't great, often forced by some contrived circumstance, and really goes nowhere in the end. Maybe 5 is too generous. I guess I was intrigued.