If you look at Steven Soderbergh’s body of work from the last dozen years or so, it seems with every film the director becomes more obsessed the way careerists lose themselves in their work. Out of Sight and Che join up thematically with the Ocean’s films, Erin Brockovich, Traffic, even the The Limey, as movies about work, in which the people who do the work are so single-mindedly focused on the tasks ahead of them that work and life become a continuum, and the identities they create to get through the former can’t get put away at the end of the day when it’s ostensibly time to attend to the latter. They’re films in which life ends up happening in sudden moments, organically, as an unexpected side effect of the job.
The Girlfriend Experience is no exception, though this is not exactly the meticulous document of process that Che was. Starring porn star Sasha Grey as a high-end escort who alternately goes by the names Chelsea and Christine, Soderbergh’s quick and cheap digital feature is not the graphically sexual verite that fans of Grey’s previous filmography might have expected/hoped for. Instead, it’s a cold (although understandably, necessarily so), hands-off portrait of a certain New York City life about a month before the 2008 presidential election. Though improvised based on a linear outline and shot in sequence, as edited Experience jumps back and forth in time somewhat frantically. At Sundance, Soderbergh cited his own The Limey as an inspiration for the new film’s construction, and though there are similarities, this seems slightly more methodical. Here Soderbergh often jumps ahead to sketch out an events or conversation, then moves on to something else, then goes back to color in the details of the sketch. (The version available now on VOD and premiering in theaters next week felt slightly tighter to me than the rough cut shown in January, but that might have been an illusion; I might have just been more ready for its non-linearality the second time around.)
With panic over the economic crisis inescapable even in the extremely moneyed circles in which she does business, our heroine sees clients, argues with her live-in personal trainer boyfriend Chris, brunches with a call girl friend, lunches with a journalist (played by real-life prostitution expose writer Mark Jacobson) and meets with a variety of men who can stand to help her “expand [her] business.” Through it all, she maintains an impenetrable (no pun intended) facade, which beings to slip somewhat when the discreet, buttoned-up and reserved Chelsea starts to suspect that she’s losing business to a bustier, more gregarious service provider. Ultimately a “connection” with a new client and the manipulations of an online hooker review writer (played by none other than film critic/blogger Glenn Kenny, apparently typecast for his talent at cracking even the toughest girl’s shell via his written word) combine to damage her armor, though not irreparably. A terrifically loaded final scene reminds us that business trumps private life every time.
Chelsea is often seen with laptop on lap, recording an in-depth log of the superficial details of each date. She takes notes on what she wore, what designer made it, what the client thought of it; where they went, what they discussed, whether or not they had sex (and if so, for how long), and what happened after. This ostensibly helps her maintain an illusion of interest in each “boyfriend”; she spends considerably less taking taking note of what’s going on with her actual boyfriend. Chris’ career, like Chelsea’s, is based on constant up-selling to maintain a “relationship”, but he’s not as adept at it as his girlfriend is. Chelsea brags about being “the best” at what she does, and we don’t see evidence that this is sexually-based bravado; it seems like her real talent is in convincing buyers that she’s a luxury they can’t do without.
Soderbergh’s visual style mimics Chelsea’s running log. He uses his camera to coldly collect visual notes on New York City in October 2008: Chelsea, behind dark glasses, glides through town in the back of a town car, weaves through blocks of shops, dines in high end restaurants in converted industrial spaces with faux old-fashioned fixtures. The Girlfriend Experience feels like an extraordinarily up-to-the-minute slice-of-life — albeit one that’s still, by virtue of the election no longer being an open question, instantly dated. It’s a book of sketches of the filmmaker’s recent preoccupations and fascinations translated into snapshots of the city, worked out in slick video images that are at once austere and seductive. Subjects are often presented in simple wide shots, with the camera far enough away to suggest surveillance. Close ups, especially of Grey, fail to function as the windows on internal life that Hollywood film trains us to look for. This is a movie about a woman whose sleepy eyes and slight smirk rarely betray the slightest worry or impression. She spends 98 percent of her waking life strenuously avoiding letting anyone in, and Soderbergh sticks to her surface for about the same percentage of his film.
The sex industry angle gives The Girlfriend Experience a hook, but the most salacious material in the film is provided by Glenn Kenny’s critic, who sleazes his way into a “review copy, so to speak,” and ultimately provides the cruel catalyst for TGE’s key bit of narrative conflict — a professional blow (by blow) opening the door to emotional vulnerability. On the whole, Soderbergh seems less interested in what it feels like to be a professional girlfriend, and more interested in what it looks like to be in any kind of relationship in a time and place where economy is at the center of every conversation, everyone is looking to get more out of every transaction, and the culture accords an extraordinary amount of fetish power to young, beautiful women who can commodify themselves without compunction. Sex has very little to do with it.
Scant phrases above were repurposed from this thing I published during Sundance.
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SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth