I’m all for zeitgeist films, as well as low-budget realist experiments, and The Girlfriend Experience just ekes into ‘excess’ territory for both of these to the point where it is no longer believable or real at all. Almost immediately after the credits play out, Soderbergh dives head first into real world topicality, showing a group of 30-something year-old business men debating an Obama/McCain debate which most likely just happened a day or two before this scene was shot. We see this group of men intermittently throughout the film (one of them is the boyfriend of Sasha Grey’s Chelsea), and all of their scenes involve discussions of either the looming election, the tanking economy, or pedestrian relationship observations. Of those three, the economic crisis is the most ubiquitous in the film, as its presence is felt in every escort, shopping spree, personal training session, and business gathering. The problem I had with the economical doom and gloom wasn’t its topicality, though, but that it just doesn’t feel natural. Rather, it seems like both a cop out, and an obligation.
The film, like all of the multi-platform projects that Soderbergh will make in this contract, is a quickie. The haste brings positives with the negatives, of course. As bad as Sasha Grey’s performance often is, I still love that she was in the film; choosing her to play an upscale New York escort who has a commitment crisis with her long-term boyfriend is instantly layered based solely on the inspired casting. A drawn out casting session, I believe, would have resulted in picking a safer, blander choice, although the acting would have been much better, too. But, having so much real world, current-events banter comes off as grasping at straws; an easy way out. You don’t have to write dialogue when you can read off front page headlines.
A number of significant events detailed in the film are dissected and mixed around to make the rather cliche narrative arc feel more ‘fresh’, but its a phony tactic that frustrates more than intrigues. I became annoyed when characters were speaking about an event that I was unaware of, how X was feeling after Y happened, not knowing who X is or what caused Y until 10+ minutes later, only to back-track and explain what was already said, but less confusingly this time. It is a gimmick that has no role in the strengthening the film’s point other than concealing that there probably isn’t one. That said, that last shot, however empty, is pretty grotesquely perfect. Sasha Grey’s stilted line-delivery didn’t erase the natural aura that she has which makes her completely watchable. I don’t believe that a single word that she says when she is analyzing Man on Wire would actually come out of her mouth, but that’s not to say that I don’t believe that she means it. Her brash sense of escaping her life with a married man is both childishly naive and surprising in the maturity she exudes in these scenes. I was often embarrassed for all involved with this film while watching it, but I was never bored or indifferent to the events that play out. These two Soderbergh quickies, the other being Bubble, are my two favorite Soderbergh films.