The Girlfriend Experience

2009. Dir: Steven Soderbergh. Starring: Sasha Grey, Chris Santos, Mark Jacobson, Glenn Kenny and Christine Nadeau. ●●●●○



I had planned to get some professional help, and a little insider knowledge, when reviewing The Girlfriend Experience, but alas "Sean"'s plans changed so I am writing from my own experience and knowledge only.

Steven Soderbergh's fourth feature from 2009 is by far his most outré, in terms of both content and style. Che was in immersive biopic of a controversial 20th Century figure as viewed through a very small period of time, The Insider a comic vignette, an exercise in big gestures and little resonance. In The Girlfriend Experience we follow a high class hooker (Chelsea), as played by porn actress Sasha Grey, over a couple of weeks leading to the 2008 Presidential election. During that time we meet her clients, her friends, her business associates and hear her diary entries.



It should be noted this film is not an exercise in titilation, at no point are Ms Grey's physical attributes glorified or debased. In fact we see much more of her chatting to her clients about the future of the economy or their family than we see her even kissing the patrons. This is also not a film about the horrors of protitution. Chelsea is strictly top end, offering a Girlfriend Experience, not a quick blow job up a back alley. The clients and the environments reflect this. And as there is no risk for Chelsea this can therefore be not seen as an essay on the rights and wrongs of prostitution. If you had imagined either a cheap thrill or a polemic then this is not the movie you think it is.

Instead the film looks at the nature of identity and how that is affected by selling yourself. The film plays with chronology, often returning to scenes over and over, and one of those is an interview where Chelsea is repeatedly asked what if a client wants the real her. Each time she answers that he gives the client a fake version of the real her, but you can it's that question preoccupying Soderbergh. What is the real Chelsea and how do the layers she puts in front of herself affect her self confidence?

Sashe Grey gives a remarkable performance, destroying any notion you may have that pron stars can't act. For the naysayers who would claim that Chelsea is so close to Grey that it's not acting I would say just look at the nuance in her eyes. The way she sits with her clients, the abstract listing of her designer shoes, her mouth curling when she receives a 'phone call at a hotel (I don't want to spoil that scene but it's a killer). I really hope that Hollywood sit up and take notice as I'm sure Sashe Grey could make that transfer to mainstream cinema with ease.

The rest of the cast are patchy, Glenn Kenny is suitably sleazy as an erotic reviewer, but her boyfriend Chris Santos ia little more than buff furniture.

Soderbergh uses a fly on the wall style which compliments the idea of detachment from the protagonists. The camera is often a couple of tables away in a restaurant or through the glass of a taxi, making each scene seem to be like snippets of conversation we've overheard with nothing really said of any importance.

For a 77 minute film there somehow manages to be some filling, as Soderbergh tries too hard to reflect selling your body against the meltdown in the banking industry and the confidence in the forthcoming changes in administration, perhaps streamlining some of this might have left the film feeling less baggy. Overall though this was an excellent look at a difficult to comprehend subject, proof that Soderbergh really is the king of indie cinema.