Last Friday I had my own Girlfriend Experience with one of the loveliest ladies I know Miss Whitney Roux, author of la poursuite de vie, when we went and saw Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience at the Miami Beach Cinematheque. Before the film began the Director of The MBC stated that this is a movie for fans of Sasha Grey & for fans of the language of cinema, Whit and I immediately looked and began to point at each other since we undeniably represent the former and the latter, respectively. I asked her to write a 5 minute review of the movie and also wrote my own.
Whitney's Review:
The Girlfriend Experience is a film that combines a thought provoking story line with an interesting telling of the story itself. Sasha Gray's performance, as a high class, independently owned and operated, escort is not exactly ground breaking. Her character is not only vacant but un-relatable. A fan of her previous, and less mentally taxing work, I found her to be nothing more than what she appears to be in real life. Her character is not only guarded, but apathetic to everything but fashion. Now whether or not she is really like that would be the deciding factor in reviewing her acting skills.
Her character and her lifestyle present ideas such as how to keep your private and professional life separate when your body and soul are so tangled in the two. Questions of female nature, and the ability to be totally unaffected by sex, and be with a man in a way which seems like love but is not. Questioning how two people who sell themselves (even not relating to being an escort) have anything left to give to someone who actually love them. There are more but those are just some that are brought up through the film.
As far as the film as a whole goes, putting all the pieces together to make the story is the best part. By splicing together all different days in a timeline that gives little insight into each situation before finally showing the conclusion of that specific situation makes this film great. Previous to viewing the film, the director of the theater reminded us to watch Sasha's clothing in order to better follow the timeline of the story.
All in all, I give this film 5.5 stars out of 10. See it if you like Sasha Gray, see it if you just like movies. Don't see it if you are bored easily or get confused a lot.
While I certainly respect and understand Whitney's views on the film, I was clearly there as a lover of the language of cinema, and not for Sasha Grey. I think The Girlfriend Experience is a movie that cinephile's will be talking about for the ages in terms of it's distribution business model, the non-linear digital format and how it fits into Soderbergh's canon because it was reminiscent of Sex, Lies & Videotape, but incredibly modern. The acting was certainly nothing special and the story follows five days in the life of high-end escort Chelsea/Christine, played with practically no effect by Sasha Grey, though her boyfriend played by Chris Santos (a squinty eyed, younger, less talented, prettier version of the wonderful Mark Ruffalo) gave it a good effort. The film itself was scattered, and a bit difficult to follow at the start, but slowly unveils itself as a deeper picture than you first expect. It's certainly not the best film I've seen all year, but certainly one of the more memorable thanks to Soderbergh's effortless direction and constantly clever camerawork.
My rating: 8/10
