The Girlfriend Experience

[Dave Monroe]

Soderbergh's Girlfriend Experience Porn-Star Is a True Character
By J. Hoberman
Tuesday, April 28th 2009 at 3:16pm
Magnolia Pictures


Steven Soderbergh has no particular stylistic signature and one of the
most uneven oeuvres imaginable. But he does have interests. The
essence of cine Soderbergh is the application of the filmmaker’s
intelligence to a specific problem. In Che, it was the nature of a
historical actor; in The Girlfriend Experience, it’s the nature of
acting.

The hardcore teen queen who took the name Sasha Grey and refers to her
porn films as performance art here plays a paid escort called Chelsea.
Working out of the posh Manhattan loft she shares with her boyfriend,
a professional trainer (played by erstwhile trainer Chris Santos),
Chelsea charges $2,000 an hour. For something like $25,000, a "date"
with this slim, pretty, perfectly-turned-out 20-year-old can really be
like a date. The movie’s opening scene has the escort and her
less-than-middle-aged john dining at some painfully hip boîte and
discussing the movie they just saw (Man on Wire), before they retire
to his pad to make out on the couch—with breakfast the next morning on
the penthouse terrace. It’s October 2008, the stock market is
plunging, and, like most of Chelsea’s clients, he feels obligated to
give her investment advice.

The Girlfriend Experience is a mosaic of short, largely
a-chronological scenes. Flashbacks are indistinguishable from
flash-forwards; the emphasis is on Chelsea’s behavior in the here and
now. Soderbergh’s camera placement signifies the intimacy that is the
escort’s product. The economic imperative rules nearly every
interaction: Chelsea’s capital is her body and her persona. A
conscientious entrepreneur, she dutifully writes up her dates—noting
her outfit (half the movie’s budget must have gone for her clothes),
topics of conversation, and sexual acts performed or not. She’s
developing her own website and, in addition to her accountant and a
financial manager, consults some online types, including a sex critic
(onetime Premiere movie critic, Glenn Kenny), who offers to "up her
profile" by reviewing her services on his blog.

With some clients, Chelsea plays the shrink, low-key and solicitous;
with others, she’s simply a source of physical comfort. With most,
however, she’s the ideal girlfriend—a poised and personable
ingénue—which is more or less the role that Sasha Grey, reader of
Thomas Pynchon, composer of "noise music," and winner of the 2008 AVN
Award for Best Oral Sex Scene, has in "life." ....

http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-04-29/film/soderbergh-s-girlfriend-experience-porn-star-is-a-true-character/