The Girlfriend Experience Review

Posted by Erik Luers on 05.27.2009

Coming soon to a theater near you......

Sasha Grey ... Chelsea
Chris Santos ... Chris
Timothy J. Cox ... Businessman
Timothy Davis ... Tim
Ted Jessup ... Chatty John
Shakerleg ... Drummer
Jeff Grossman ... Stock Broker
Kimberly Magness ... Happy Hour
Ken Myers ... Restaurant maitre'd








The tagline for Steven Soderbergh's new film, The Girlfriend Experience, is plainly, "see it with someone you f**k". Needless to say, I viewed the film alone with a glass of iced tea and did just fine. But now thinking back, it may be best to engage in intercourse while the film plays out, as at least you'll have something to keep you entertained throughout its duration. Soderbergh's new piece is a mixed bag working towards loftier heights. It is in fact so minimal that it may not even exist; it's a film even Antonioni would accuse of lacking plot. The story? Well, we get little bits here and there of expensive New York City call girl, Chelsea (Sasha Grey), in the fall of 2008, engaging with clients about the economy, Barack Obama, and sex. She is a young girl who is successful at what she does, as she only deals with the most financially sound, desperate men. Sometimes she provides them with comfort via intimate conversation, while other times she uses her sexual allure to get the job done. Either way, you have to commend her for being an entrepreneurial woman of the twenty-first century.

And see, there I go describing a plot that doesn't really exist. What I have described are observations made while trying to make sense of the multiple fragmented snippets presented as Chelsea's life. She goes out, meets client, spends time with client, tries to be existential with client, goes home, sees boyfriend, fights with boyfriend, stares blankly as we cut to quick glimpses of dark highways and piercing light bulbs, gives interview with journalist in restaurant, ponders endlessly, and so forth. Soderbergh tries to make these moments interesting by presenting them out of order ("the more spiffed up the presentation, the better" he may be thinking), but it doesn't make the pieces any more involving or compelling.

The films asks us to be active as it remains passive, and we keep waiting for a moment that is going to spring to life and claim significance. Chelsea's boyfriend, Chris (Chris Santos), doesn't like what she does for a living. They argue over her decision to go visit a client for a weekend whom she has never met. The couple fight for a little while, and then things get quiet. Chris will go to Las Vegas with friends and Chelsea will go visit this mystery man. Are Chris and and Chelsea supposed to be contrasting one another? Are they one in the same? Is this much sought after, hardworking gym trainer, Chris, whoring himself out just like his woman in order to live the American Dream?

The film asks us these questions and then runs away from them, as if it would be, as one critic coined it, "vague." The Girlfriend Experience isn't concerned with answering questions, but posing them, and then smiling as you try to figure it all out; it's all rhetorical and distant. People have described the approach as "artsy", but there's a difference between a good art film and a bad one. Take its approach to the narrative. There is no reason for this story to be told out of order, contrary to what its defenders will try to tell you. It's just told there to be different. There's one lifeless scene after another, and there is apparently no such thing as human emotion in this city that never sleeps (or breathes).

By now, you've all heard about the casting of porn star Sasha Grey in the lead role. Has Soderbergh made a great discovery or is it all mere gimmickry? As it turns out, it's neither. Grey is adequate in her first mainstream role, but nothing in her performance resonates for very long. She has a very monotone, somber speaking voice, and she seems so far removed from her words that you never develop a connection with the character. Is Chelsea too smart for her own good, or too philosophically sarcastic? Because she is so distant by nature (she must be in order to protect herself from getting attached to clients), we never care much about Chelsea; her absence of emotion makes us more frustrated than sad. Grey does the best that she can (the scene where a client cancels on her and leaves her to nonverbally question her choices in life is powerful), but she doesn't make the film involving enough to care. She's a blank slate lacking motivation.

The New York shown in the film is upper class, unstable and yet career oriented, caucasian men and women who take private cars to and from work. Chelsea makes two thousand dollars a hour, so I can understand that, but I sincerely hopes she chips in and buys her boyfriend a monthly Metrocard. But would that make their relationship superficial? This film is all about superficiality, so the more the merrier. Chelsea is emotionally removed from her johns AND her boyfriend, and one of the only times she sheds a tear (aside from the aforementioned scene) is when she describes a strange bit with a Q-Tip and her vagina. Take that as you will. If the man she were telling this incident to weren't so profoundly sleazy, perhaps we would care more.

In a way, Soderbergh has made one hell of a feminist picture. All of the men are depicted as sex hungry, creepy, antisocial losers, and we spend way too much time with each of them. Oh, and they aren't very likable either. All they can talk about is the impending 2008 presidential election and their own cash flow, and Soderbergh doesn't want us to care for them. They are all the same, white America, suited up, businessmen, afraid of women and social interaction. Soderbergh frequently shows us scenes of a group of men (Chris included) on an airplane going to Vegas with a video camera documenting their trip. They are annoying, just out of college men that talk about "real" issues (sex, relationships, social problems, etc.) without any of them sounding the slightest bit intelligent. If this is what Soderbergh is getting at — and I'm not sure that he is — why must we spend so much time with these lifeless individuals? Better yet, why is everyone in this film a lifeless individual? We do not look for a protagonist but rather anyone with the slightest sign of a pulse.

One particular bias of mine was reconfirmed throughout The Girlfriend Experience, and that was that digital cinematography is dark, ugly, and drab. Each frame lacks detail, and it's a shame that, for a low budget production such as this, Soderbergh resorts to this imperfect technology. The dimly lit restaurant scenes seem too dark (and we almost have to squint for clarity as Chelsea and Chris have dinner together at their apartment), and the day sequences that use natural lighting are overpowered and washed out by the sunlight. Either things appear too bright or too blurry for the scenes to possess depth. Many times I found myself distracted by the imagery; let us not hold a eulogy for 16MM film just yet.

In the end, The Girlfriend Experience isn't an experience but an experiment. Normally I would applaud this gorilla, shoot on the go style of filmmaking for being ballsy and inspiring, but I find myself not being able to do so here. Soderbergh has been on his game for over twenty years now, and this one just feels like a hypothesis for a larger theory; the film has elements of superb drama without ever finding a particular use for them. At least David Cronenberg's Crash, another film about sex that tries to dehumanize the natural act, had an idea of what it wanted to say (and it cut much deeper than Girlfriend). What we are left with is a cultural artifact that has its heart in the right place but its brain somewhere else. The final scene, involving a diamond district, on the clock, orthodox Jewish man may confirm why John McCain didn't win last year's election. I guess Soderbergh will always have that.

The 411: I was greatly disappointed by The Girlfriend Experience, a film which has a good director and interesting idea as its premise. The writing is very bleak and flat (the tone of this film could be described as constant solitude), and the talented if inexperienced actors can't elevate the material. The cinematography is also ugly, and the editing calls attention to itself, as if wishing to mystify and further complicate the narrative. Is there a point to it all? Sure, but no one in the film could tell me what it was. The Girlfriend Experience is a dead lay.

Final Score:  5.0   [ Not So Good ]