Girlfriend Experience: Soderbergh Returns to Form

The lead actress in Steven Soderbergh's "The Girlfriend Experience" is a 21-year-old porn star. That's a first for a major dramatic film in this country. This may sound like shallow stunt-casting, but I think there's more to it than that.

"The Girlfriend Experience" is a low-budget but gorgeous film shot on video in Manhattan with what appears to have been a very limited crew. It explores aspects of postmodern existence, particularly the commodification of emotional intimacy.

The film also experiments with cinematic form in some intriguing ways, letting "real life" bleed into the film. For example: the film was shot last fall, when the no.1 topic in America was the economic downturn. The script was opened up to incorporate this. The characters discuss the economy much the way the actors and crew must have been discussing it during set breaks.

Casting a porn star in the lead role functions similarly. Not only does the film raise interesting questions about the commodification of desire and love. The lead actress actually embodies those issues, nicely blurring the lines between character and actor.

Sasha Grey (using her porn-star name) gives a mesmerizing performance as Chelsea, a high-class prostitute who offers more than sex to her clients. She goes out to dinner with them, to the cinema, holds their hands, listens to their problems, and even is willing to stay the night and have breakfast in the morning. In short, she provides a girlfriend experience.

Chelsea also has a boyfriend, a "real" one -- that is, he does not pay, at least not in an obvious way. The boyfriend, Chris, is a dashing personal trainer. The film spends a lot of time documenting the couple's glamorous life and drinking in their personal beauty. We see Chelsea in sumptuous hotels and restaurants, getting into and out of exquisite clothing. When she writes in her diary each night, she describes what she wore that day, naming the designer of each garment. When not shopping or with a client, Chelsea meets with investment advisors. This woman clearly has a head for business.

Money and clothes are not the only things on her mind, however. She also values love, but she has an oddly calculated approach to it. Her feelings for Chris appear to be genuine, but Chelsea keeps her options open. When she becomes infatuated with a handsome client, she openly tells Chris that she's going to spend a weekend with the client (not for pay) to test the waters of having a relationship with him. What's especially odd is that Chelsea considers the client a catch in large part due to his date of birth. She is fixated on some kind of occult science, perhaps numerology. It is never explained, but Chelsea alludes to it several times. The film appears to be saying that in the postmodern age, love is morphing in ways that we cannot quite understand yet.

"The Girlfriend Experience" is a tour de force of hand-made, guerrilla filmmaking and it is one of the most interesting films of the year. It is a joy to see Steven Soderbergh returning to form, after "Che" (2008) and "The Good German" (2006), two of the worst films of the decade.