The Girlfriend Experience review

The Girlfriend Experience

2009

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Steven Soderbergh is certainly one of the most interesting directors working today. Whether he is making big summer blockbusters like Ocean’s 11, Epic bio-pics like Che or crazy indie flicks like Bubble he always achieves some degree of success. The Girlfriend Experience, his latest experimental film is another triumph for the director, who’s able to find the most human side in the most messed-up of characters.

The film follows the trials and tribulations of Chelsea (played by porn actress Sasha Grey), a New York City escort who is paid to provide her clients “the girlfriend experience” where she acts as girlfriend for lonely men for a short period of time. This period may or may not involve sex as part of the experience depending on her customer’s needs. She has to balance her work with her relationship with her boyfriend (Played by Chris Santos).

The story is presented in a non-linear fashion and is told via an interview between Chelsea and a reporter, a conversation with a fellow escort friend and by herself as she narrates her blog entries. This storytelling method proves to be confusing as it makes the story hard to follow, but after the first hour or so it’s easier to connect the dots and enjoy it.

Soderbergh and his writers (who also wrote Ocean’s 13) do a great job in letting the audience understand the characters and their problems. You never feel disgusted with Chelsea as she is shown as strong, smart and not ashamed of her job yet you cheer for her to get out of that lifestyle and make a transition towards a more stable life and relationship. You also never feel sorry for her customers when you know you probably should because for the most part they’re pathetic men. The way their stories are put together and evolve makes you feel sympathy for all the characters, you certainly won’t but at least you’ll understand them.

Technically the movie looks very amateurish, you can tell Soderbergh was just messing the hell out of some cheap cameras and editing software yet it’s composed of some pretty great looking shots and the editing, though a bit rough, gives it a great style that fits the tone of the movie really well. Some of the shots, especially the camera movements reminded me a lot of Hideaki Anno’s Shiki-Jitsu and Love & Pop, which is not a bad thing.

Perhaps the most surprisingly good thing of all is Sasha grey’s performance. If you’ve seen a porno movie before you’ll certainly notice that it takes absolutely no acting talent to be in one which is why I wasn’t expecting much from her, but I was blown away by her role. She portrays Chelsea as strong, intelligent, likeable, emotional yet not vulnerable but most of all human, she is not the sex doll some of her clients see her as and Grey does a fantastic job at revealing her inner emotions.

My only complain with the movie and the reason it’s not rated higher is because it lacked closure, which left me immensely unsatisfied as I felt there was a final act missing and the final scene is all kinds of ambiguous. Yet despite that I still strongly recommend this movie, it's beautifully well made and surprisingly well acted and best of all, unlike most experimental films it doesn’t feel pretentious at all, it truly is a fantastic movie.