CINEMA: The Girlfriend Experience

Dec 06, 2009

Written by: Dee Pilgrim

With its staccato, jarring camera moves and low level lighting, Steven Soderbergh’s latest, small budget production can be hard on the eyes and also on your concentration levels.

It’s meant to be an intimate and in-depth exploration of the high-end escort industry but ends up being a pseudo-documentary of an unhappy hooker.

Sasha Grey stars in Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience

The film stars real life porn star Sasha Grey as Chelsea, a prostitute who offers her executive clients the full ‘girlfriend’ experience; they can take her out for meals or drinks, talk to her like they really are dating her, take her to bed and even kiss and cuddle her, but all for a price and no strings attached.

Chelsea, who speaks and acts like an automaton with no discernible emotions, sees what she does as a business and wants to build a portfolio of clients. She is fully supported in this by her boyfriend (Chris Santos) but the wheels start to come off her rigidly controlled life when a new client wants to take the girlfriend experience one step further by taking her away for the weekend.

It’s a soulless tale that makes for a pretty soulless film, the only colour it possesses is provided by a sleazebag blogger (Glenn Kenny) who says he’ll give Chelsea a stunning review on his sex connoisseur website if she’ll give him a freebie. He’s on screen for all of five minutes but makes more impression than Sasha Grey does in the whole of the rest of the film’s 77 minute running time.

Author: Dee Pilgrim

Dee always knew she wanted to make her living from writing and so trained as a journalist before working for a variety of music and women’s titles including Sounds, Company, Cosmopolitan, Ms London, New Woman, and Girl About Town. After going freelance she concentrated on celebrity interviews and film, theatre, music and restaurant reviews. Her love of film goes back to her very first cinema experience at the age of five when her mother took her to see Bambi. She cried. At one time she was the Film Editor for NOW magazine and also the secretary for the film section of the Critics’ Circle and the celebrity coordinator for its annual film awards’ event. She has written a number of books for teenagers through Trotman Publishing, including five Real Life Guides to vocational careers (including Carpentry, Plumbing and Catering), and also three books on Real Life Issues (Money, Bereavement and Self Harm). Her favourite film is still Bladerunner.