“The Girlfriend Experience” is the second of Steven Soderbergh’s ongoing series of low budget movies for Mark Cuban, shot and edited quickly and largely starring non-actors. (The first project, 2005’s “Bubble,” is grossly underrated.)
This time, Soderbergh’s focus is on the life of a high-class female escort, played by porn star Sasha Grey. What makes her life so different is that she’s in a committed relationship with a gym instructor who knows what she does for a living. Essentially, the movie is a series of interviews – we see her talking to various clients, an investigative reporter, her friend, and a lecherous online critic (played by former Premiere critic Glenn Kenny).
Most often, it turns out, the subject is the current economic crisis. The movie seems to have been filmed right before the November 2008 Presidential Election, and there’s a lot of talk about that, too. It’s sort of refreshing to see a movie that is so connected to a specific timeframe, and it’s great that Soderbergh doesn’t try to hide the fact that he shot this thing fast and loose (and very recently). There’s no attempt at making this timeless, about reading into its time period. Like a lot of things in the movie, it is what it is.
It turns out Grey is a pretty god actress, although she comes off a little robotic at times. (You can totally play this up to how she’s been hollowed out by her work.) What’s interesting is that there’s no moralizing about her character. She is a prostitute. Her boyfriend is a gym instructor. And that’s just how their relationship functions (and it does function – for the most part).
The conflict of the piece comes when Grey decides to “test out” the romantic viability of one of her clients, which puts a huge strain on her real relationship. It’s ugly, for sure, but realistic and unresolved.
Soderbergh shot and edited the film himself and has once again chopped it up and rearranged the bits to the point of abstraction (maybe cubism). Slowly, the pieces begin to click into place, and the larger work seems apparent. At 77 minutes it is visually and thematically rich, and its charming shagginess ensures multiple viewings. (How great is it that he followed up a four hour historical epic with a modern slice-of-life film that’s a little more than an hour long?) The propulsive score, by Morcheeba’s Ross Godfrey, dazzles, and almost everyone on film is really wonderful, even if they’ve never been in a movie before.
Here’s hoping for more of these oddball little movies in between his larger projects. [B+]
My review shortly. Had different feelings than Drew.
Caught the movie a few nights back, and had much the same reaction, particularly wrt to the way the director didn’t attempt to make some universal, timeless piece of film by stripping out references to current events.
Great blog, stumbled onto it while looking for the soundtrack, which I will snap up as soon as it’s available.
Hi,
My comment is a bit late with respect to the date of your post, but I am desperatly looking for the soudtrack of this movie (Soderbergh's Girlfriend experience). Does anyone know where to get it?
Thanks.