CMFH Film Reviews

2009, USA
Drama, Romance
Review by Deborah Dearth

READ THE REVIEW AT The Desert Sun.
Extended version:

After recently exploring the life of an iconic revolutionary with the hefty two-parter Che and adding a third notch in the Oceans heist films starring Hollywood's sexiest A-listers, director Steven Soderbergh cleanses his palette with the sort of barebones film that echoes the one that launched a thousand indies two decades ago: sex, lies, and videotape. His latest release, The Girlfriend Experience, takes a voyeuristic look at the skewed life of a high-priced call girl.

Much like the multi-format release of his 2005 film, Bubble, The Girlfriend Experience utilizes amateur actors with casual improvisation and has been released through Video On Demand before hitting the theaters. Sasha Grey, prolific porn star of such films as Sasha Grey's Anatomy, appropriately fills the shoes of a Manhattan prostitute known as Chelsea and newcomer pretty boy Chris Santos acts as her personal trainer boyfriend Chris in a calmly greedy game to the wealthy top despite a rapidly tanking economy. The film takes place during the fall 2008 stock market crash and touches on the effect that the upcoming presidential election results will have.

Chelsea's relationships with her clients are unique in that she mimics relationships rather than simply acts as a sex doll, and foreplay is often the dutiful undressing before bed while discussing investments. Her role is not one of comfort but rather an ear on which to bend and occasionally nibble. As conversations express worries about the future, clients hint at restraining payments on the luxuries that Chelsea and Chris provide, just as the couple is attempting to expand their individual enterprises. Chelsea's life is further examined through conversations with real-life journalist Mark Jacobson and film critic Glenn Kenny, the latter acting in a pervy parallel as the "Erotic Connoisseur."

Soderbergh acts as cinematographer (under his customary pseudonym Peter Andrews) and editor, filming artistically and yet with a distance akin to the style of documentaries. The first half of the film is a series of beautifully framed scenes that mirror the expensive art displayed in the couple's home -- a mimicry that implies the façade of the life to which they aspire. Simultaneously, the film is often photographed naturally, from a backlit silhouette to a washed-out handheld shot. The short timeline is delivered carefully out of sequence, with scenes that reveal subtle turning points without being jarring.

With The Girlfriend Experience, Soderbergh hides behind the guise of experimentation though his techniques are sophisticated. The story is a surface-level look at the thorny life of tricks, and yet it is easy to become entranced. As Chelsea becomes distracted by random rules of numerology, the city around her is swallowed by the unpredictability of the stock market; both are betting on sure things and crossed fingers. Soderbergh seems to film by the same rules, and with The Girlfriend Experience he comes out ahead.