Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience

"Shot over 16 days in October 2008, with Palin v. Biden in prime time and the imploding economy in the headlines, Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience is a scintillating whir of half- and fully formed ideas about sex, politics, and money that strongly recalls, both in subject and impishly fragmented style, the Godard films of the 1960s. So it’s only fitting that the star of Soderbergh's $1.7 million whatsit is none other than Sasha Grey, a 20-year-old adult-film ingénue who originally wanted to call herself Anna Karina. Grey plays Chelsea, a high-end New York City escort who spends her time in between clients developing a promotional website and diversifying her assets, while her live-in boyfriend angles to advance his own career as a personal trainer. Not surprisingly, Soderbergh manages to find an analogue for the filmmaking process even here, when Chelsea has her services ‘reviewed’ by a self-appointed escort critic (played creepily well by former Premiere film critic Glenn Kenny). The Girlfriend Experience struck some as ‘cold,’ though that’s just a marker of how well Soderbergh manages to capture a zeitgeist in which everyone is selling (or for sale) and anesthetizing pleasure is but a click away" (Scott Foundas, Village Voice). Colour, 35mm. 78 mins.

Plays in a double-bill with Ileana Pietrobruno's Girlfriend Experience.