The Girlfriend Experience
Director: Steven Soderbergh
With The Girlfriend Experience, director Steven Soderbergh has the distinction, not achieved since the ripe years of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, of having four films released in one year. Admittedly, Che Part One and Che Part Two still appear to me to be one movie, but let’s not take the statistic away from him.
I would like to think that Soderbergh is still getting over his creative break with the almost as ubiquitous star-turned-producer/director George Clooney – three films released this year – and that he identifies with the subject of The Girlfriend Experience, a New York escort girl named Chelsea.
Played by adult erotic entertainment star Sacha Gray, she alternates her appointments with her high-paying clientele, among them a visiting film producer and a prurient somewhat past middle-aged writer, with her domestic life with her personal trainer boyfriend Chris (Chris Santos). Chelsea or Christine, as she is otherwise known, is attempting to establish her brand in a period of economic uncertainty. She pays for upgrades to her website and allows herself to be “reviewed” by a writer known as the Erotic Connoisseur. She is also into a form of numerology. Her decision to take on a client depends on his birthday.
Chelsea may be another New York whack job, but we don’t see much her job, much less whacking. Erotic encounters are described and events unfold in a non-linear fashion. This is Soderbergh channelling Jean-Luc Godard – a sort of “Two or Three Things I Don’t Know About Her”.
The identification is apparent in Chelsea’s descriptions of her evenings – what she wore, what she did – Soderbergh is all about technical details. Chelsea is aloof; Soderbergh’s style precludes emotional involvement. Chelsea does not appear to be moving towards something and I’m not sure Soderbergh has found his style either. He is still experimenting.
Chelsea has an unconventional view of fidelity and a desire to test her beliefs. This leads to a scene where the violence inflicted on her is psychological – abandonment – rather than physical, which is what we expect, given her precarious lifestyle. The chronological mash-up with a scene set on October 25 followed by one on October 16 keeps us intellectually interested, while single scenes, such as a plane trip to Las Vegas, are broken up and scattered through the course of the movie.
After a while, though, my eyes glazed over. The film suggests a critique of the philosophy that you need to spend to stimulate the economy – and gold is the only valuable commodity. But references to the 2008 economic meltdown are not coherently developed. The final sex scene in which Chelsea, dressed in gold underwear, brings an elderly New York jeweller to non-penetrative orgasm just by standing next to him, provides one of two moments of comedy; the other features a pair of buskers singing “Everyone’s a Critic”. Other than these, this experience made me feel nothing.
Patrick Mulcahy
