Steven Soderbergh was on hand at the Eccles Theater in Park City tonight to screen a “work-in-progress” cut of his latest low-budget digital picture for HDNet Films, The Girlfriend Experience. Starring porn star Sasha Grey as a high-end escort who alternately goes by the names Chelsea and Christine, the film is not the salacious, 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.
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, 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, until 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.
It’s probably not fair to offer a full review of a work-in-progress, but Experience fascinated me enough that I do want to throw out a few comments.
With a tone and approach vaguely reminiscent of Hal Hartley’s The Book of Life, Experience (at least in the incarnation we saw tonight) feels like an extraordinarily up-to-the-minute slice-of-life, a sketch of the filmmaker’s current preoccupations and fascinations 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 (and sleeping) life strenuously avoiding letting anyone in, and Soderbergh sticks to her surface for about the same percentage of his film.
Though improvised based on a linear outline and shot in sequence, as edited Experience constantly jumps back and forth in time to the extent that events and conversations alluded in fragments throughout, but can only be fully pieced together at the end. Citing his own The Limey as an inspiration for the new film’s construction, Soderbergh acknowledged after the screening that the severe non-linearity is challenging. “There are people who do not like stories told like this, and that’s fine,” he said. “The couple of times I’ve done this, I’ve tried to find that balance of interest and intrigue, but also playing fair. There is a line there, where if you don’t dole out information in the right way, people get pissed off.”
By “people”, Soderbergh may mean “critics.” Whether it’s Jacobson’s prying reporter who admits that he’s only interested in information that will push Chelsea/Christine beyond her comfort zone, or Kenny’s internet critic/wannabe pimp who gives good reviews only to girls who are really willing to work for it, Experience weaves in a hostility to the media. Soderbergh echoed that subtext before and after the screening, first complaining that the details of this alleged “sneak preview” screening had been leaked online, then, in response to a question about how he felt watching the film with an audience for the first time, dryly snarked, “Read my blog.”
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