The high class hook of The Girlfriend Experience

Following closely on the heels of Showtime’s Secret Diary of a Call Girl (and that whole  “Client 9” thing with former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer), Steven Soderbergh’s new film, The Girlfriend Experience, delves into the world of high-class prostitution. Shot pseudo-documentary style, the film follows Chelsea, an escort, and her personal trainer boyfriend, Chris, as they respectively navigate their relationships and work lives. With the entire world at her fingertips, Chelsea is young, savvy, and fetches $2,000 an hour for her services. The film doesn’t really focus on the more sensationalist aspects of her work life; there is little sex and the clients are not cataloged in a comical or dramatic fashion like they are in Secret Diary. Instead, The Girlfriend Experience hones in on the more commonplace aspects of the sex-for-hire business, like Chelsea’s day-to-day personal upkeep and her ambitions to grow her business online.

This dry, straight-forward delivery is familiar from Soderbergh, who utilized non-actors and improvisation in his previous film, Bubble. Whereas Bubble, set in a barren Midwestern town, was considered particularly sparse and neo-realist, The Girlfriend Experience is coated in a glamorous polish of trendy, low-lit Manhattan restaurants and to-die-for real estate. In other words, it’s lifestyle porn.

Despite the voyeuristic jollies derived from subject matter alone, the film’s most enticing draw is Sasha Grey, an actual porn star, who plays Chelsea. As a “real” actress, I’m not sure whether to be impressed or bored by Grey. Her performance is either incredibly understated or incredibly undemanding. She delivers her lines with the utmost ice and upper-class ennui, like one of those vapid, deadpan girls from The Hills. But there is something more beneath Grey’s perfectly groomed, Marc Jacobs-adorned exoskeleton that signals a ruthless hunger or a guarded self-consciousness. Or maybe that’s just what I’d like to think. Given the apparent similarities between Grey and her onscreen Chelsea -- both of which utilize naivety and sex appeal to their advantage -- I think Soderbergh is on to something even more sensational than a juicy, high-priced-hooker story.

-- MIKE BERLIN

Previously > Drag Me to Camp Horror Heaven

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