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The Girlfriend Experience (2009)

Posted By: Mindsnatcher
1080p (FullHD) / BDRip IMDb
The Girlfriend Experience (2009)

The Girlfriend Experience (2009)
With Commentary by Steven Soderbergh and Sasha Grey
1080p BDRip | mkv | x265 HEVC @ 2619 Kbps, 23.976 FPS | 1920 x 804 | 1h 16min | 2.04 GB
Audios: English DTS-HD MA 5.1 @ 2977 Kbps, 24-bit | English AC3 2.0 @ 224 Kbps (Commentary)
Subtitle: English | Genre: Drama

The Girlfriend Experience (2009)
The Girlfriend Experience (2009)
The Girlfriend Experience (2009)
The Girlfriend Experience (2009)
The Girlfriend Experience (2009)
The Girlfriend Experience (2009)
The Girlfriend Experience (2009)
The Girlfriend Experience (2009)
The Girlfriend Experience (2009)
The Girlfriend Experience (2009)

Director: Steven Soderbergh
Writers: David Levien, Brian Koppelman
Starring: Sasha Grey, Chris Santos, Philip Eytan, Colby Trane, Peter Zizzo, Ron Stein

Grey plays Chelsea, an upscale Manhattan call girl, a kind of Holly Golightly gone thoroughly modern. Unlike most escorts, who get the wham-bam-thank you ma'am treatment, Chelsea provides her clients with something more than just sex: the titular "girlfriend experience." For a tidy sum of $2,000 per hour, she'll listen to your woes, feign interest in the books you're reading, and treat you to tender, understanding intimacies. Her clients pay a premium for emotional investment, and Chelsea keeps a detailed diary containing all of her johns' likes, dislikes, and erotic hang-ups. Along with physically and emotionally servicing her clients, Chelsea is also in a committed relationship with her boyfriend Chris (Chris Santos), a personal trainer with an obviously high threshold for jealousy. If you guessed that the limits of this threshold are ultimately tested, give yourself a pat on the back. During a particularly rough week, stained by an icky encounter with online escort critic "The Erotic Connoisseur," Chelsea meets and falls for a new client, a screenwriter who's only in town for the weekend.

It sounds straightforward enough, and indeed it could be, but Soderbergh tries to wring emotional mystery out of what is otherwise a clear, slice-of-life plot by using a disjointed, non-linear narrative. In some ways, it works. The fractured nature of the time-skipping scenes acts as an audience hook, forcing us to invest ourselves in the story. In a sense, it also mirrors Chelsea's equally fragmented schedule, as she flits from client to client, presenting a different face to every john. In other ways, it just seems overly convoluted, a stylish way to pad out the simplicity of the plot. The film may be too complicated for its own good, but unlike Bubble—Soderbergh's lo-fi, improvisational murder mystery—The Girlfriend Experience is never dull. Neither is it titillating, however, which is what some viewers may expect from a film—about a call girl—that stars a real-life porn star. There's no sex and very little nudity in the film, as Soderbergh is more concerned with the idea of sex—the force that it exerts, the neediness it inspires, the commodity it can become—than the act itself. And even as a force, Soderbergh shows sex as secondary to money, mammon, the almighty dollar. Set during October of 2008, during the financial meltdown and run-up to the presidential election, the film doesn't beat around the bush —no, not that bush—when it comes to its economic subtext. All of Chelsea's clients have been hit hard by the recession, and the wording seems entirely intentional when one john says, "The economy is f—ked, and my business is f—ked." I'm sure there's a metaphor or allegory lurking in here somewhere, something about capitalism as prostitution or the government offering its financial teat for bankrupt companies to suckle, but I haven't quite put a finger on it.

Equally vague is Sasha Grey's sleepy-eyed performance. It's hard to tell if she's good at playing emotionally distanced or if she simply is as walled-off as she appears. It's clear from certain character choices she makes that she's a thoughtful actress—her commentary track with Soderbergh reinforces this—but for a twenty one year old, she's trying to affect a much older, more world-wearied persona. At times she seems like a girl playing dress-up, unable to emotionally match the sophistication implied by the clothes that, physically anyway, fit her staggeringly well. Admittedly, this suits her character—someone who thinks she's more in control of her life than she actually is—but it's hard to tell if we're seeing an act, or reality. This appears to be Soderbergh's intent, and the entirety of the production seems geared toward blurring that line. As with Bubble, the dialogue here is almost completely improvised, and with no lighting rigs or studio artifice—the film was shot with the digital RedOne camera, on-location, with available light—the director allows Grey and her scene partners plenty of room to explore different avenues of expression and conversation. Soderbergh avoids condemning or condoning sex work, preferring a more objective, documentary-like stance, and he wisely resists the urge to over-explain Chelsea's motivations, staying away from the clichéd, "my uncle used to come into my room and now I'm a prostitute" type stories. While The Girlfriend Experience isn't entirely successful, and though Soderbergh has taken more than a few critical hits for his more experimental films, I'm glad to see the director so willing to challenge himself and find the creative freedom in working within self-imposed limitations. Not every film has to be Ocean's 11, right?

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