Film Review: The Girlfriend Experience

The Girlfriend Experience
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Released May 22, 2009

There’s a tendency when it comes to independent films to be daringly experimental, and the idea that less is more is terribly enticing. Why bother with an expensive cast and detailed backgrounds when a camera lens and a bare, human performance can heap layers of meaning onto the thinnest of premises? Director Steven Soderbergh lives to have it both ways, alternating between awards (Traffic, Erin Brockovich) and box-office (the Ocean’s Eleven series) successes and smaller, art-house films (The Limey, Full Frontal) where he can really experiment with the form and see where film can take him and his audience. “The Girlfriend Experience” is unabashedly a purely investigational film, probing the possibilities of film without much of a plan for how to really pull it together.

Soderbergh’s first step in attempting to establish an untouched reality is casting porn star Sasha Grey in the lead role as a prostitute who operates her business while still maintaining a long-term relationship with her boyfriend, an ambitious physical trainer. The film meditates on fleeting moments to stress their importance, and the camera lingers on its characters, desperately searching for meaning in their elitist, superficial interactions. Plot is almost non-existent in “The Girlfriend Experience,” and the narrative is far from linear. The film’s brief 78-minute runtime almost ensures that nothing of substance can actually occur, and the purposely choppy editing seals the deal. It’s an incomprehensible experience from the start that only confuses itself more as the film goes on.

Documentaries consist of pieced-together interviews which shed increasing light on the subject of the director’s investigation. The reason for including interviews is because experts and witnesses can provide their relevant thoughts on why it is that something exists or works a certain way, and because further clarification can only be helpful. In the case of a scripted film, the characters should be able to do the storytelling, and viewers shouldn’t be forced to construct their own version of events and perception of relationships because the film refuses to do so on intellectual grounds. A narrative film can be artsy and take an indirect approach to its conclusion like “My Blueberry Nights” or “In The Mood For Love,” but there should be some point or concrete notion in sight.

“The Girlfriend Experience” employs nonprofessional actors in a flagrant attempt at capturing reality at its grittiest. Grey has only pornography experience on her resume, and therefore uttering legitimate sentences seems to take a great deal of effort. The actress’ transformation from sex symbol to legitimate performer doesn’t yield a stunning tour de force performance; instead, she’s maddeningly unimpressive. The same is true for the rest of the cast, who speak casually as if they’re perpetually responding to an off-the-cuff question from a reporter. Reality is great, certainly, and aiming to showcase it in its most unadulterated form is noble, but sometimes people talking is just people talking. Hidden meaning doesn’t suddenly arise simply because actors are trying not to give anything away. Movies are movies for a certain reason, and part of that reason is to dramatize events and craft something out of them. Here, Soderbergh leaves the pieces scattered as they are and expects his audience to pick them up. It’s substantially different from watching George Clooney and Brad Pitt steal from casinos in Las Vegas, but it’s about as interesting as talking to a new neighbor who just doesn’t have any particularly notable qualities to offer.

F