Tagline: See it with someone you ****
Chelsea (Sasha Grey) is a high-priced $2,000-an-hour call girl in Manhattan, offering a ‘girlfriend experience’: she’ll dress with the client in mind, go to dinner and a movie, listen attentively to talk about work and finances, and she’ll provide sex. It’s October, 2008: a presidential election nears and the economy is in free fall.
She has a boyfriend, Chris (Chris Santos), who’s a personal trainer. We are shown five non-consecutive days in Chelsea’s life. She’s working on her Web page, talking to image consultants, and being interviewed by a reporter. She asks clients when their birthdays are and uses that for an astrological prediction. She’s drawn to a new client, a writer from L.A. Should she break her rules for him? What if it risks her relationship with Chris? Should she invest in gold?
The Girlfriend Experience is an experimental drama film shot in New York City. It is directed by Steven Soderbergh and stars then-active porn star Sasha Grey. A rough cut was screened at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2009. The film has also been made available on Amazon Video on Demand as a pre-theatrical rental. Soderbergh mentioned Michelangelo Antonioni’s Red Desert and Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers as influences. The film is also notable because it was produced for $1.3 million and was shot with a relatively inexpensive Red One camera.
Long Synopsis
Chelsea is an upscale Manhattan call girl who provides more than just a sexual encounter; for a price, she’ll simulate a complete romantic relationship-a girlfriend “experience.” Despite a wide variety of happy customers, Chelsea wants to expand her business. Her real boyfriend Chris, a personal trainer at a downtown gym, has come to terms with his girlfriend’s level of experience, not to mention the posh apartment they share as a result of her success.
But it’s October of 2008 and the faltering U.S. economy is on everyone’s lips. One of Chelsea’s clients, a Hassidic jeweler, advises her against keeping her savings in diamonds-“Diamonds have no value. Keep it in gold.” Meanwhile, she solicits advice from businesspeople (some of whom are clients) on how to achieve growth in a down market. Chelsea goes so far as to visit a sex connoisseur who runs an influential website and who promises Chelsea a favorable review in exchange for a free sample.
Meanwhile, Chris finds himself at an impasse in his own career: training wealthy hedge fund managers, he’s generating plenty of business for the gym, but little of that lucre is coming back to him. Worse, his relationship with Chelsea has cooled–hardly a girlfriend experience at all. On the heels of a nasty web review from the sex connoisseur, Chelsea meets Philip, a new client from out of town who listens to her as she unloads her career anxieties to him. In Philip, Chelsea finally sees the promise of a real relationship-a real girlfriend experience-not just another transaction.
Awards
2006 RRFF Best Newbie
2007 AVN Award for Best Three-Way Sex Scene
2007 AVN Award for Best Group Sex Scene
2007 XRCO Award for Best New Starlet
2007 Adultcon Top 20 Adult Actresses
2008 AVN Award – Best Oral Sex Scene,
2008 AVN Award – Female Performer of the Year
2008 XRCO Award for Female Performer of the Year
Continue Reading and View the Theatrical Trailer
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
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