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Steven Soderbergh’s latest digital doodle The Girlfriend Experience isn’t just simple, it’s scant. With projects like these, simple is just fine, and while a conventionally structured story isn’t necessary, a compelling vision is. Without any dramatic tension, filling the void with rich detail and subtext becomes doubly important. Unfortunately, Soderbergh isn’t able to achieve that level of depth and the film comes across as little more than a sketch.

What he’s after is documenting the contradiction between the public faces we all wear as armor — how we act around others — and our true selves. Chelsea (Sasha Grey) is a “sophisticated” escort who struggles with the persona she’s forced to inhabit for her clients, and even for her boyfriend Chris. Chris is a personal trainer and therefore also someone who offers himself as a service or commodity. While there are some strong scenes, such as when Chelsea briefly lets down her guard in front a client, Soderbergh mostly draws thin situations for Chelsea to deal with her existential dilemma, often having her simply vocalize her feelings. Sasha Grey’s performance is fine, though she’s asked for little more than to look aloof and pensive. The act, however, grows tired quickly. Ditto for her costar Chris Santos.

This film’s DIY style feels too antiseptic and remote to mine emotional weight from the action, and the execution ranges from inspired to lazy to obnoxious. Soderbergh’s eye for framings, for example, is as sharp as ever. The decision to eschew a linear timeline by cutting up and rearranging scenes, while varying the rhythm of the film, ultimately feels empty. A scene filmed with a hand-held camcorder, complete with repeated zooms on nothing, meanwhile, simply took me out of the film.

In the end, though, it’s hard to fault the brave director for these HD curios. Even if they don’t always work, the idea of a successful and award-winning director chasing inspiration through small, personal, challenging projects is very refreshing. When a big-budget film fails, it’s hard to rationalize the waste of money, talent and time that would have been better spent somewhere else. A filmmaker like Soderbergh, however, is always curious and always working, on canvases both large and small. So why not give something like The Girlfriend Experience a try?

This brilliant film by Steven Soderbergh subtly examines the commodification of intimacy, the tidy packaging and sale of the ‘Girlfriend Experience’ for ready consumption. But also, more importantly, it investigates the forces driving this phenomenon in our culture, asking if we are so alienated from our own basic drives, yearnings and needs by society, and perhaps more insidiously, by interpersonal relationships, that we no longer know how to escape the incessant, subconscious anxiety and ennui, the constant uncertainty about ‘who we are’ that haunts us. Are we so estranged from our feelings, desires and motivations, so unable to recognize what is authentically part of our identity versus what is part of our ‘being for others,’ that we are willing to pay exorbitantly for a glimpse of basic human understanding, caring, nurturing and ‘love,’ even when these are artificial constructions engendered by an illusory ‘relationship’? In short, yes. Even Chelsea/Christine cannot avoid this suffering, clinging to her books on ‘personology’ in a futile search for a semblance of ‘reality’ within her chimerical world, ultimately finding only that last indisputable truth: pain. The filmmaking of GFE is equally brilliant and visually engrossing, Soderbergh’s ‘cut-up’ style transcending standard narrative structure and leaving us with a much richer experience of the film (view the alternate cut on the DVD to further witness the beauty and nuance achieved through his non-linear storytelling). Finally, though I’m not familiar with Miss Grey’s body of work, nor with her penchant for having her various bodily orifices penetrated, she seems quite insightful and articulate, and the Soderbergh/Grey film commentary (on the DVD) proves to be very illuminating. Much like a GFE escort, even if Miss Grey is not a true film auteur in the academic sense, she’s intelligent enough to fake it, and when you want to believe something badly enough, that elusive line between appearance and truth can magically disappear.

While I was expecting a story-focused tale on the experiences of an escort with her different clients, what I got was a documentary-style film far more focused on the intimate story about a confused girl searching for meaning in the wrong places. For many, Grey’s acting might seem a bit cold, however I find it right where it needs to be, somewhere between a lost girl and a detached woman and if anything, the only thing I was left wanting for, was a better script and a deeper behind-the-scenes exploration of this unique lifestyle.

Interesting and challenging, though I’m not sure that the ideas in the film were explored as well as they could have been. Despite her obnoxious pretensions of being the cinephile’s porn star in interviews, Sasha Grey’s performance gives exactly what is demanded of her and she does a fine job. The movie has segments where it feels like a beautifully photographed mumblecore movie, and that’s not a compliment. I feel I need to see it again before I can say whether or not it was good, but it was interesting, but not necessarily compelling or engaging on the first viewing.

It’s fascinating how much opinion on this film varies. For one thing, quite a few straight men were very disappointed by the absence of sex scenes in a film starring a porn star. Yet this only cements the film’s notion that sex, as well as the promise of sex or inference of sex, is a bargaining chip — a commodity like any other currency. Its commercial draw is no different than the appeal of power, fame, beauty or fortune.

I’ve heard further complaints about Sasha Grey’s “flat” acting. I don’t know if I would risk casting her in something dramatically complex like a Cate Blanchett role, but as “Chelsea”, Grey needs to erase any trace of individuality or personality and she does it very well. It’s not the same as bad acting or non-acting. “Chelsea’s” market value depends on her ability to play nobody and anybody to the men who acquire her services. With a mere blink or a hint of a frown, Grey can convey a flicker of amusement, ennui, or disdain behind her iron mask. It’s an appropriate performance for a film made in a video verité style. Real people don’t behave anything like actors.

I was completely taken with this film. Sasha Grey, of course stunningly beautiful, delivers a wonderful and magnetic performance amidst equally beautiful cinematography by Soderbergh. While I would be surprised if Grey could pull off acting professionally, as opposed to the naturalistic style on display here, she fully embodies the role and Soderbergh is able to full draw out every subtle shade in her character. All of the other characters are perfectly cast as well and amazingly portrayed. Please see it!

This was cinematographically and structurally very satisfying. It feels like an experiment; which is what it is … which is fine, and as just that, a remarkable and often mesmerizing film. At 77 minutes, it feels just right – a taste, a window. Many [most] feature narratives should aim for such a running time – I’d rather get a small and satiating glimpse into a film world than what we usually get, a five course meal force fed, redundant and bloating.

Soderbergh helms the camera and his play with color and shape is perhaps the standout element. The sound/music also is pretty incredible – subtle yet playful uses of actual street music, commanding atmospheric beats and drones.

I am left somewhat put off by the film’s mumblecore-like tomfoolery, yet simultaneously struck and in awe of its structural, aural, and HD bravado.

I didn’t like GFE in the sense that I enjoyed the experience. However, the style and events are true to who Chelsea is as a person and as an “escort” (not mutually exclusive either). True to her standards, we are allowed to participate, to watch, but never invest. I dislike Chelsea. At her most vulnerable, the most I could feel for her was indifference. It’s difficult to sympathize with her but I got why she does what she does, why she makes certain decisions. And sometimes, all one can really do is understand and leave it at that.

rich men talk about the economic collapse and their business losses to an escort while paying her $2000 for an hour. this and other contrasting observations of society in relationships and sexuality, left me captivated…along with the non linear narrative and ….. as one of sasha grey’s client talks about a movie they’ve jst seen together (man on wire), “i really liked the docu-fiction feel of the film”. a cerebral and visual pleasure.

The Girlfriend Experience is a film unlike any other. A complex meditation on contemporary capitalism and hyper-consumerism in the upper-class, everything about this film is a product of itself and the condition of humanity in this layered and calculating society.

The protagonist is Sasha Grey; a real life 20 year old hardcore porn star playing a call girl Christine aka Chelsea that is seen in the film, comforting, listening, concurring but not having sex (on screen) with various non-descriptive men. Perhaps this is the point.

Avant-garde and mainstream dualist filmmaker Steven Soderbergh who is responsible for the “Ocean’s 11” remake and its sequels dabbles in low budget indie flicks from time to time, and this is his latest opus. Grey is an object of desire in ‘real life’ and in this movie is the same item wrapped in different packaging. Her character is an object, not a protagonist that we feel for or who drives story and produces satisfying outcomes. This was perfectly conceived by Soderbergh, and is the reason why he has chosen Sasha, the controversy of casting an adult film star is over-shadowed by her cold, subjective performance, that touches on her inadequacies, lack of confidence and willingness to excel as a reputable call girl and not a cheap ‘whore’.

Most characters in the movie do not have a role; merely titles. John (prostitute speak for client) #1, #2, a journalist, a boyfriend, a creep, etc. Ultimately we could personify any one of these characters, and this film has the potential to draw you in; to whomever you feel you could be given that situation.

In this throwaway culture, loveless sex is profit and passive entertainment, filling lonely voids, often ‘The Girlfriend Experience’ in its form is simply being given the chance to be heard without judgment. The director’s experimentation with this passive observatory style creates a truly alienated but bold overview of capitalism at its core, which cannot be judged thoughtfully. These overtones are highlighted using masterful camera work, focusing from a distance on the characters monotonous conversations from a behind view, the out-of-focus camera also fixated on contemporary design such as the light fixtures in the many upper class cafes and restaurants visited in the film, brand names and entrance ways, suggesting a completely non-bias view of whatever is happening as that is not being focused on, not sided towards either character or their opinions or conflict, they do not matter and are not interesting in this context.

Another trick is the use of music in the film, which is erratically coming and going, cutting bluntly and in one scene fading into a street performer’s song instead of a melody in Chelsea’s head and life. This and the camera work well together to create the short-lasting impression that this is a film with character focus, it lulls us into this premise before a flash of exciting camera work and loud music blitzes back into the mundane nothingness, comparable to removing headphones quickly, the silence seems louder, and this is the point, there is no escapism here.

The last main technical accomplishment is the random narration over scenes from Chelsea who describes tonelessly her clients, their brief activities and what fashion she prepared for her ‘meeting’ with them. This further accentuates that this is a study of the situation and not an involvement.

The characters are purposely not developed, they are simply given lines that briefly explain who they are and what they do and this gives room for complex interpretation. It is clear Chelsea is in a loveless relationship, moreover one of convenience, filling her emptiness, until something else comes along that makes her feel anything; arguably capitalism could be defined the exact same way. Her boyfriend Chris (played by Chris Santos) has an arrangement, with rules and boundaries that they live by, a Zen-like aphorism for the films premise; a relationship that is unnatural and lifeless.

This feeling is intensified by the use of blurred and contrasted scenes involving her Boyfriend, they are noticeably a different tone of brighter color, and it is designed this way to give the impression that they are leading extremely different lives. The scenes are convoluted; a situation occurs and the audience has no idea what is happening, until two scenes later, an unexplained flashback that somehow explains it. Perhaps a tool to enunciate the feeling of controlled chaos.

The consumerist lifestyles and ideologies are included in this film as under-tones; Chris is a personal trainer, which is ironic considering Chelsea has all the power and control. Her lifestyle choice is also an interesting sticking point; her belief in Astrology, as new-age religion, a product of capitalism, is mentioned and used for her as an excuse to attempt to fall in love again. Chris is upset, but this scene where she confesses this to him is played with such unemotional delivery and heartless rationalism which leads to deal making and the best outcome. Perhaps Chris is The Boyfriend Experience.

Each client Chelsea encounters are semi-successful business executives, so their conversations to her are always regarding business, in particular the economic crisis, circa 2008, in an attempt to remain relevant in order to connect us to this ‘fictional’ world of capitalist consumerist ideals.

The Girlfriend Experience is a sleeper hit and masterwork of film making into an art form that personifies an intangible concept; Capitalism. The passivity of the film can be interpreted as voyeurism, the point of the film that you have possibly seen it because a porn star is in it, the human condition to watch other people’s lives play out, essentially breaking an existential wall as we watch the society that watches. I highly enjoyed The Girlfriend Experience; it is a movie I was absorbed in, fascinated by the subject matter, the distance and loneliness that was not focused upon and that masterful technical approach Soderbergh applied.

A quiet little flick that sets itself firmly under the “indie” moniker. Sasha Grey certainly isn’t the best actress – she’s utilitarian at best – but her childlike beauty and detached delivery works 80% of the time. There’s a lot going on here: the discussion and commentary on recession economics, the idea of an escort/boyfriend relationship and the implications, the equation and links between sex and money.

I actually don’t think that the film was as confusing timewise as many critics thought it was. Its fragmented nature probably makes more sense on a second viewing.

I don’t think it’s the most memorable movie ever, but there’s plenty of material here to keep the synapses firing after a first viewing.

I like the Ocean’s movies as much as the next guy, but something about Steven Soderbergh’s indie films show how much of a paycheck job those blockbusters are. His artistic endeavors may not always work—see the disappointing Ché Parts 1 & 2—but they do consistently show an auteur trying something new, challenging himself and his viewers. I have not yet seen Bubble, but 2009 brings us his second feature under the HDMovies deal, bringing his films to theatre, DVD, and TV simultaneously. That film is The Girlfriend Experience starring pornstar Sasha Grey as sophisticated escort Chelsea and her struggles in a Depression-era NYC weeks before the Presidential election. Juxtaposing her job with that of her personal trainer boyfriend—yes, the “legal” hooker has a live-in significant other; strange indeed—we catch a glimpse into the world of high-class, high-salary business and how the economy effects both them and their clients much like it does the little man such as us.

The title is an interesting choice because Grey’s escort doesn’t really play the girlfriend to any of her clients onscreen. Mostly being used as a prostitute to men who have left their wives and children at home, her only real need to be the girlfriend is with her man Chris. This then begs the question on whether her relationship with him is also just another job. More a situation of convenience, Grey’s penchant for her astrology books soon becomes more important than Chris and what they have together. One could have called the film The Boyfriend Experience because it is he—actor Chris Santos—that plays the part. She is with a different man each night, so she needs that one constant to come home to. He fills that role in her life, him being there is her payment for sex rather than the money of her true clients. If she is willing to wreck a year and a half of what they have had together in order to “see” what may come of a new client she has met once, a client married with two little girls, you know that it has all been just a game.

The economy has caused financial security to be in limbo for everyone, but it has also left the permanence of love in the fringes as well. Much like Grey’s Chelsea is attempting to branch out and start a clothing boutique, not to mention expand her own escort service, Chris is trying to get a fitness line of clothes into stores on consignment if not fulltime while also shopping himself around to other gyms in the city in order to find more money. Insecurity for the future pushes them into doing things they wouldn’t normally do. Chelsea is meeting with a sleazy message board operator to try and expand her exposure, having to satisfy him in order to do so and Chris is going behind the back of the gym he isn’t even willing to wear a uniform for, but which he hopes to find a managerial position with. Their personal life is not untouched, however, as Grey still looks to her customers as possible love interests, serious enough to leave her constant behind without batting an eye and Santos is propositioned to go on a guy’s trip to Vegas with a client—something he is willing to pass up because his girl disapproves. But then why would she be so confused when he threatens to leave her if she goes away on weekend with a customer of her own?

I do not use the word proposition lightly either. Soderbergh appears to intentional show how similar these two characters are. Both are setting up appointments for clients; both are in the business of getting to know each personally, keeping a good rapport to help facilitate the want for future engagements. Chelsea whores out her body to satisfy men’s sexual desires and Chris pimps out his to satisfy his gym members’ need to feel good about themselves and their physiques. Both are asked to take out of town trips and both try to set themselves apart from the competition, whether other gyms or the new girl on the escort circuit. These two actors do an admirable job in their conflicted and troubled parts. They may not be quite professionals in the craft, nor does Grey quite deserve the universal praise that seems to be piling up, but they do effectively portray these roles.

In a climate that has customers on both ends in serious discussion about the upcoming election and diminishing profits from years past, (Chris’s business friends taking him to Vegas continue to talk politics and Chelsea’s men either try and tell her how to liquidate her funds or who to vote for, that is when they aren’t on their phones while she waits in lingerie in the next room), these two are very much the exact same person. In reality, the only difference between them is that he is genuine in his love for Grey while she appears to have only a fleeting desire in him. So, I guess the title works better than I had previously thought. She is giving him the girlfriend experience, even if she does so unintentionally. Karma has its way of getting back at you, though, and Grey’s mistakes and hubris soon catch up to her. While business may be booming—for now, as that message boarder’s review may hurt a bit—her personal life is falling apart all around her. We may worry about how the economy will affect our livelihood and not see how unimportant it all is. If we don’t find and hold onto the love in our lives, whether family, friends, etc., all the success in the world monetarily won’t mean a thing.

I don’t see why everyone’s so angry. To me, it’s weirdly tense, expertly shot, nicely composed and put together and resists the urge to be pornographic. I liked it and found it an interesting character study and a decent comment on the economy, which sucks (explaining both the character’s financial trouble, alienation, and the film’s tiny production and modest budget). Sure, some of the players aren’t exactly the greatest actors in the world, but whatever, it’s small and unassuming and really pleasant.