Review for The Girlfriend Experience
This film is true about human nature. It clearly sees needs and desires. It is not universal, but within its particular focus, it is unrelenting. Steven Soderbergh’s “The Girlfriend Experience” is about a prostitute and her clients. In such a relationship, the factor of money makes the motives fairly direct on both sides.
In the language of escort advertising, “GFE” promises a “girlfriend experience.” Sometimes sex may not even be involved, although it is implicitly permitted. A man seeking a girlfriend experience offers to pay for companionship, conversation — having another human being in his life. The women offering a GFE are acting a role, but in some ways, it can be therapeutic. We know what sexual surrogates do. A “girlfriend” may be playing a human surrogate.
The film involves a woman named Chelsea (Sasha Grey) and the men in her life. She has been living with one of them for 18 months, and in a way, he may be a boyfriend experience. He doesn’t seem much more meaningful to her than a client. The other men are of various ages and backgrounds, but they all have one thing in common: They are wealthy, and Chelsea is not inexpensive. Typically, they take her to an expensive restaurant and then a luxury hotel. They may send a limousine for her.
We listen to them talking. We watch them talking. Most of them want to talk about what she does for a living. There is the polite fiction that she is talking about other men, hypothetical men, and not the one she is with. They like to give her advice about how to invest her money, and who to vote for (the story takes place during the 2008 campaign). Each one has some reason for thinking he is somehow special. Set during the run-up to the stock market crash, it shows both sides more interested in investing than sex.
These men don’t want a girlfriend experience. They want a boyfriend experience. They want to feel as if they’re on a date. They will be listened to. Their amazing comments will be smiled at. Their hair will be tousled. They will be kidded. They have told Chelsea about their wives and children, and she remembers their names. They can kiss her. There is no illusion that they are leaving their wives, and none that she wants them to. She simply empowers them to feel younger, more looked up to, more clever, than they are.
What draws a powerful man to pay for a women outside of marriage? It’s not the sex. In fact, sex is the beard, if you know what I mean. By paying money for the excuse of sex, they don’t have to say: I am lonely. I am fearful. I am growing older. I am not loved. My wife is bored with me. I can’t talk to my children. I’m worried about my job, which means nothing to me. Above all, they are saying: Pretend you like me.
The film was written by Brian Koppelman and David Levien. Believe it or not, the same two wrote the screenplay for Soderbergh’s “Ocean’s Thirteen.” I imagine the three of them sitting around on the “Ocean’s” set and asking, “What could we be doing instead of this?”
Chelsea is played by Sasha Grey. She is 21. Since 2006, according to IMDb, she’s made 161 porn films, of which only the first title can be quoted here: “Sasha Grey Superslut.” No, here’s another, which makes me smile: “My First Porn #7.” I haven’t seen any of them, but now I would like to see one, watching very carefully, to see if she suggests more than one level.
Grey wasn’t hired because of her willingness to have sex onscreen; there’s no explicit sex in the movie and only fleeting nudity. I suspect Soderbergh cast her because of her mercenary approach to sex — and her acting talent, which may not be ready for Steppenwolf but is right for this film. She owns her own agency and Web site, manages other actresses, has a disconnect between herself and what she does for a living. So does Chelsea.
The film is intent on her face. It often looks over the shoulder of her clients. She projects precise amounts of interest and curiosity, but conceals real feelings. It is a transaction, and she is holding up her end. Notice the very small nods and shakes of her head. Observe her word choices as she sidesteps questions without refusing to answer them. When her roommate/boyfriend insists on knowing the name of one of her clients, she is adroit in her reply.
Once she allows her mask to slip: a surprising moment when she reveals what she may feel. Grey perfectly conveys both her hope and her disappointment, keeping both within boundaries. You wonder how a person could look another in the eye and conceal everything about themselves. But the financial traders who are her clients do it every day. Their business is not money, but making their clients feel better about themselves.
About Sasha Grey (Chelsea / Christine)
Sasha Grey, born March 14, 1988, in Sacramento, California is an American actor, writer, photographer, porn star, transgressive artist and experimental musician. She has a strong interest in the films of the French New Wave and before deciding on her present stage name, she toyed with the name of Jean-Luc Godard’s ex-wife Anna Karina. In interviews she has stated that the name Grey represents two things: Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Grey and the Kinsey scale of sexuality (homosexual to heterosexual, a grey scale in-between).
Sasha began college in August of 2005, balancing school and work seven days a week, and soon after moved to LA to pursue a career as a porn star. Around this time she started thinking about pornography as a career opportunity. Sasha has a huge appetite for sex and self-exploration.
Sasha is a genuinely smart, funny, ambitious, and daring person. She does the work she does because she wants to – because she not only enjoys the sex in all its myriad forms but also because she likes doing, as she calls it, performance art.
Accolades: Star of more than 80 porn films, Grey was featured in the November 2006 edition of Los Angeles Magazine, which flagged her as a potential major star, the next Jenna Jameson. Grey was chosen as Penthouse Pet of The Month for July 2007; the spread is considered to be a radical change for the magazine as it was photographed by the fashion photographer Terry Richardson.
In 2008, she won Female Performer of the Year at the 25th Annual AVN awards. She is also featured as part of the art work for The Smashing Pumpkins 2007 album Zeitgeist, has modelled for American Apparel and Richard Kern for Vice Magazine, and made the 2009 Rolling Stone Magazine Hot List. Sasha starred in Lee Demarbre’s horror film, SMASH CUT, which will be out Spring of 2009, and she recently wrapped filming the lead role in Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience which is due out in May 2009.
The Girlfriend Experience (2009)
Directed by: Steven Soderbergh
Starring: Sasha Grey, Chris Santos, Glenn Kenney, Peter Zizzo, Philip Eytan, Marshall Gilman, Michael Roberts, David Levien, Mark Jacobson, Sukhdev Singh, Alan Milstein, Jim Kempner
Screenplay by: Brian Koppelman, David Levien
Cinematography by: Steven Soderbergh
Film Editing by: Steven Soderbergh
Costume Design by: Christopher Peterson
Art Direction by: Carlos Moore
Music by: Ross Godfrey
MPAA Rating: R sexual content, nudity and language.
Distributed by: Magnolia Pictures
Release Date: May 22 2009
Visits: 163
