Review: The Girlfriend Experience
Filed under: Drama, Theatrical Reviews
By James Rocchi (original publication date -- 1/21/09 -- Sundance Film Festival
The beige square on the Sundance schedule for today -- "Sneak Preview," 6:15 at the Eccles -- was, over the past few days, filled in with a thousand brushstrokes of rumor and intimation and heard-it-from-a-friend-who-heard-it-from-a-friend whisperings. The first murmuring I heard to make that "Sneak Preview" a must-see was that the presentation was going to be an evening with Steven Soderbergh, a night of clips and conversation -- until that proposition, exciting as it was, was supplanted by another rumor: That the Eccles Sneak was going to be Soderbergh showing The Girlfriend Experience, his new run-and-gun, shot-with-the-4K-Red-digital-camera, adult-actress-in-the-lead-role, largely-improvised drama about the life of a New York escort. The rumors, for once, were true.
Soderbergh introduced the film with, as he put it, "a few caveats" as a "work in progress" projecting a 1080p reduction of the 4K file. In 1989, Soderbergh gave Sundance, and then us, sex, lies and videotape; in 2009, he offers sex, truth, and digital video. Much fuss was made when Soderbergh announced this film, and even more was made when he cast adult actress (the polite euphemism for 'porn star,' and that itself a polite euphemism for 'someone who has sex on-camera for money') Sasha Grey in the lead role as a Manhattan call girl who offers not just rushed release but the more refined "girlfriend experience" -- a suite of services including, as we see in the opener, fine red wine and Marc Jacobs black dresses, soft kisses and small talk, and many more things, an experience that goes far beyond sex. And yet still includes it.
Roland Barthes said "Sex is everywhere in America, except in sex." Sex is everywhere in The Girlfriend Experience, except there's no sex. There's a minimum of nudity, and we don't see anyone doing the deed, but as Grey's relationship with her boyfriend is challenged by her work, as she tries to satisfy old clients and meet new ones, as she stretches and tones her body with the same diligence and care any craftsman would apply to their tools of their trade, we come to understand that Soderbergh is less interested in sex work than he is in work; we watch Grey's trainer boyfriend look for opportunities with new gyms and pitch his clients on buying bigger training packages while she approaches an "escort reviewer" to try and increase her profile in the field and worry about re-launching her website with the best possible search engine optimization.
Within five minutes of the end of The Girlfriend Experience -- thank you, Twitter -- film journalist Eric Kohn dubbed it "a period piece from October 2008"; he's exactly right. People complain about the electoral debates, the bailout, the economy in free-fall; one of Grey's clients, as he undresses, notes how she has to vote for McCain to best support the state of Israel. Grey and her boyfriend are freelancers (Aren't we all? And if we are not, isn't it fairly possible we might be in the future?) and we watch them trying to stay paid and afloat in 2008, an effort that's all about the sell, the struggle, the work. Yes, it may be the world's oldest profession, but as we've all learned the hard way lately, seniority doesn't always mean security. You could make a case that Che is a film about the problems of communism; you could also make a case that The Girlfriend Experience (a title with layers of meaning and interpretation as intricate and delicate as the La Pearla lingerie Grey name-checks in her flat, matter-of-fact opening that narration about one of her client meetings) is a film about the problems of capitalism.
But for all of the hushed rumors that Soderbergh was going to go bravely into the realm of real sex on-screen with Grey as his muse, that never happens; instead, as Grey talks to her clients and her boyfriend and a client she might like to think of as her next boyfriend and a journalist and other men, she's blank and cool and pale as a movie screen, ready for whatever anyone might want to project on her. Grey is not a great actress -- I can't really imagine her playing Ophelia or one of the Three Sisters -- but she is someone who, at the most direct level, has sex with people she doesn't know that well for money, and her matter-of fact demeanor and dimmer-switch coquettishness -- she can go from inviting to dead-eyed at the flick of a synapse - serves the film well.
Soderbergh stated in the post-screening Q&A that he shot the film in 16 days for a budget of 1.7 million; this may make The Girlfriend Experience an exercise, but it's a fascinating one. Working with non-professional actors (including journalist Mark Jacobsen as a journalist and movie reviewer Glenn Kenny -- a friend, but also undeniably hilarious and acid here -- as a escort reviewer) and with a camera so light and light-sensitive that only two scenes in the film required more illumination than was already in the room, Soderbergh's made an intimate and yet honest movie about honesty and intimacy. As he pulled the curtain down on the night, Soderbergh was mock-serious: "You were never here, and this never happened." But we were, and it did, and the crowd walked into the cold night more thoughtful than titillated, more anxious than aroused and, just perhaps, faked out by a very different Experience than the one the beige square on the Sundance schedule promised.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
5-21-2009 @ 10:16PM
GL said...
Sounds like I would be better off just watching the reality series Grey did with Showtime.
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5-22-2009 @ 10:13AM
StaciJay said...
Yes, this flick is pretty tough to swallow...While it comes across a bit flat, it will certainly be an eye opener for those who are unaware of the daily business of an escort . Would have liked to have seen more in-depth analysis of the character’s history/background. Who is she? Where did she come from? What was her upbringing like? The movie ignores these details which are usually important for a character study.
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5-22-2009 @ 10:17AM
Lexx_Stern said...
I find it interesting how people in the industry are responding to this film. Not only does it fail as a entertainment experience, but it also apparently fails to capture the true reality of the main characters'
"industry" http://www.naughtyreviews.com/forum/hobbyist-hangout/girlfriend-experience-and-escort-review
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5-25-2009 @ 2:01AM
THE_TRUTH said...
No decent person should support this movie. Steven Soderbergh has given a major leading role in this movie to Sasha Grey, who is a young sex worker whose tragic story of sexual abuse and exploitation was spotlighted on the Tyra show over a year ago, when she appeared with her pimp, and it is a much-watched interview on Youtube. I dare anyone to watch it and not have your heart broken by her pain and self-delusion. Just enter her name in youtube search and it is the first video. By giving this poor girl such a role in a mainstream movie by a top director, it helps the pimps who tell these girls that the porn is an entryway to the legitimate Hollywood stardom and fame that they seek. And Soderbergh knew this when he cast her in the movie, he knew that she planned on continuing her prostitution, and he heard all the protest from anti-exploitation groups. There were plenty of real actresses that could have played that role. But it was more important to him to bring attention to his new movie and make more money. And I find that to be shameful and disgusting. I was a big fan of his all the way from his first movie, but I will never support anything he does again. Don't give him your money. Peace.
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5-25-2009 @ 9:57PM
Anonymous said...
Will you give it up ! This is the fifth time I've seen your Spam comments in previous Internet movie reviews. You are trying to advertise your organization which spews lies about the porn industry.
Also, why are you making up stories about Sasha Grey? It is rather slanderous if you ask me. Now go and get a real job now.
5-25-2009 @ 10:49AM
Charles Lim said...
Watch an interview I did with Freedom Tickler, the two member band in the Girlfriend Experience at my blog: http://greatincantations.wordpress.com/. Hope you enjoy it!
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6-01-2009 @ 3:09PM
aoafedotcom said...
Once upon a time, women lived at home until they got married. They never did anything to compromise their chaste reputations and they certainly never had sex with a man who was courting them. Why? To test the man's intentions. Many of these women may have ended up in unhappy marriages but the worst was abject poverty or prostitution from abandonment or divorce.
To escape their limited role, women fought for the vote and access to higher education to improve their lives. Each generation of women was able to go further and at last they desired sexual freedom. They had forgotten how important it is to test a man's intentions so as women opened up to their liberation, men became pigs feeding at a fuller trough. Women were shocked to find they didn't feel more love but more bereft. Since single women and prostitutes were having sex outside of marriage, the idea of the prostitute went from negative to positive, because the single girl gives freely and gets used while the prostitute charges and gets paid.
Why women never thought to revisit testing a man's intentions is perhaps because the cat, or the pill, or the condom is out of the bag but is embracing the farthest end, prostitution, really the way we want to go? Art has been objectifying women since the ancient Egyptians so to Madison Avenue and Hollywood it's time to close the deal on the tunnel of love already. With so many books, shows and movies about escorting, we are to believe prostitution is just a crappy job like everything else. Yes, men of means, the slow death of a desk job is exactly like a man giving you money to do whatever he and his friends want to do to your body.
Hearing the insanity of that last sentence may have woken you up. The problem with waking up is you have so many questions and you get more insults than answers because Oz never wants to be seen as the broken man behind the great machine. For instance, revisit the value of chastity and you're a frustrated lesbian or Christian freak, challenge the outpricing of education and you're a red-lovin' Communist, demand mentor programs for women in corporate organizations and you're a feminazi, or question why no one appears to be stopping the kidnapping, drugging and selling of girls and women and you're a bleeding heart liberal who doesn't understand business or political realities.
The objectification of woman and personal attacks on women are not new. What is new is after thousands of years of repression our great-grandmothers, in their tightly bound corsets and noisy skirts of Victorian lace, the kind of women who thought showing an ankle in public was indecent, stood up for themselves, stood up to their men, were often abused in public, and even went to jail so their daughters and future generations of women could vote, own land, go to college, travel freely, own a business and do things with our lives that they could only dream about.
What a tragedy it is that young girls today are afraid to call themselves feminists and young women think it's "cool" to be an escort. The only thing that would be "cool" is if these young women deceived the deceiver with his own deception: Take the money and don't give him sex. From experience, I can tell you it's not as hard as you think. Men are so use to women giving them what they want. Our vulnerability makes us easy to manipulate. They know how confused we are and how much we want to be liked. If men hurt us enough and we don't know how to change it, our hurt can drive us towards self-destructive actions like choosing to be a prostitute. I say be different, be the element of surprise.
In his arrogance, he does not expect you, a mere prostitute, to change the game and come out the winner. Men rarely encounter a woman with a enough self-confidence who cares more about what she thinks of herself then what he thinks of her. If the options are he uses her or she uses him, she always chooses using him no matter what. I am not advocating prostitution. I want women to have what our great-grandmothers wanted us to have because they know more about us than any man no matter how great his imagination. But if she must do it, then listen up.
In the old stories, men of the lower classes tricked evil kings or gods to rescue a beautiful princess or maiden and their intelligence and bravery won her hand. In Robin Hood, a band of thieves stole from the rich and gave to the poor instead of lying down and giving up to the abuses of King John. If women do not have a hero to protect them or a Robin Hood to provide for them, then women must do this for themselves. Yet we tell women, better a whore then a thief. Can you imagine a hero or Robin Hood prostituting himself to rescue the maiden or feed the poor? Of course not! We would vomit! That's how I feel when I hear better a whore than a thief.
So I say if a woman is so disengaged and prostitution becomes her way, then play the thief not the whore. You are more than a body, you are a human being so have the brass to trick a bad man who has no qualms about deceiving you that you are something less than human, less deserving of the liberties he feels so entitled to. Be like the hero, protect the girl, trick the evil kings and gods, feel no shame in stealing from the rich when they got got rich stealing from the poor and recognize there is honor is fighting an unjust system then lying down and accepting it no matter the nay-sayers. But this is the calling of a true renegade, a woman who knows she isn't sitting on her worth but her worth is sitting on her neck. In all these escort books, shows or movies, where is that story? I did it to pay for college and I know I am not the only one.
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7-02-2009 @ 5:35PM
CURIEUX said...
Movies often portray sex-workers, but their customers remain well hidden – faceless and nameless. "As a filmmaker, I simply wanted to reveal what is hidden - the john". So says Pietrobruno – the director of GFE: GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE. An entertaining peek into the world of prostitution from the client’s point of view, Pietrobruno’s GFE: GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE follows a man obsessed with prostitutes who discovers that love is a lot more expensive than sex.
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