If someone accused us for having a dangerously eye-poking erection for the films of Steven Soderbergh, they wouldn’t be correct, but we would at least take the time to sit them down and to explain ourselves. However, no auteur is unimpeachable.
No disrespect to one of our members who mostly loved “The Girlfriend Experience” but some of us must vehemently disagree. “GfE” starts strong and finishes well –as if director Stephen Soderbergh paid the most attention to crafting these scenes — and the middle sags and tends to become increasingly dull as the film progresses, as if the editing and tempo is on autopilot.
The 2nd in his 6-part scheduled lo-fi pictures deal for Magnolia/Marc Cuban, etc., the ‘GfE’ is a great concept with an interesting initial execution, but fails to illuminate after an auspicious beginning and then gets bogged down in a repetitive tedium. A time capsule of October 2008 – the economic crisis, the impending election, bailout talk on everyone’s lips – the film touches upon all of these topics ad nauseum, but says nothing remotely insightful about any of them.
Perhaps the whole point of the talky yet detached film is to convey the hollow and frosty nature of the sex trade and if that’s the aim, well hell, congratulations, but does it have to feel completely distant that you feel zero connection or even small empathy for the characters?
Honest-to-goodness, real life porn sensation Sasha Grey stars as Christine/Chelsea (the latter her working name), a high-end call girl who’s sensual package provides more than just sex, she delivers an intimate, caring, well-rounded girlfriend experience. Rich, in town for the weekend and looking for a date to go to the movies, eat dinner and fuck? She’s your woman.
The film chronicles her exploits, from client to client (all suffering economic doldrums), meanwhile navigating the stress of keeping a mostly understanding gym instructor boyfriend happy, maintaining a contending website, marking the competition (a cute new brunette on the scene) and fielding offers from various would-be managers promising “next-level” shit to increase her business. Meanwhile, a reporter is interested in her story (a committed call girl being rare), but in interviews is mostly stonewalled for info.
Then a new client enters her life and she connects so deeply with him (though we vaguely get a crumb of this feeling), that it threatens to implode her relationship.
All of this just happens though, but it mostly feels like a cardboard cutout, with little subtext or layers. Grey basically plays herself, a cagey, aloof, emotionally closed-off high-end escort whose lazy, bedroom eyes and laconic voice do nothing to dispel the notion that she’s perpetually bored stiff.
There are redeeming qualities about the film, but generally they have nothing to do with the major components of plot, characterization and acting. The cinematography is chic and textured – Soderbergh again (as his photo nom de plume Peter Andrews) proving that he’s one of the few directors capable of making digital photography look great (yes, it helps that the technology has caught up). The music, when actually present (perhaps there only 35% of the time), does leaps and bounds of service for the film’s absent mood and emotion due to the just-passable acting (around six songs by Soderbergh’s composer of choice David Holmes who gave the ‘Ocean’s’ pictures their propulsive beam, plus a atmospheric, but underused score by Ross Godfrey).
Film critic Glenn Kenny does his best to delight and add some spark to the generally inert picture as a sleazy, degenerate porn reviewer who meets with Christine, suggesting a “taste test” will elicit a strong review from his popular, taste-making porn site, but just ends up overdoing it (though improvised as it is, some of it is delicious).
Even at a scant 78 minutes the frequently shallow picture overextends itself and might have been served better as a 20-30 minute short because after that point, there’s nary a new element that hasn’t been introduced and done to death already (money, sex and politics talk). What begins as mildly intriguing soon overstays its welcome.
Now “The Girlfriend Experience” isn’t terrible at all and can be entrancing in moments (the concluding couple-apart sequence is rousing) but so far, it seems the fully-realized “Soderbergh experience” is far richer than the quick, down n’ dirty version. Of course the very nature of lo-fi circumstances make the two difficult to compare, but its just hard to switch off and pretend many of these great works aren’t immensely more engaging and even entertaining. Our favorite element of the film might still be its poster. [B-]
“The Girlfriend Experience” is available OnDemand as of yesterday (April 30) and is in theaters in limited release beginning May 22. Here’s the trailer if you missed it.