To me, this movie is perfection.

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Excellent but underrated film

Honestly, I think the disdain here is two-fold, it's certainly an experimental film and Sasha Grey was in porn.In fact, she was sort of the name in porn...I mean, Rolling Stone did a feature article about her.But the thing is, she can act. She's no Brando, but she does a decent enough job to not hate her and actually appreciate some of what she does. Some fine tuning, she might have something going for her...aside from the dubious reputation of Rolling Stones "Dirtiest Woman on Earth" And then "Soderbergh's Experimental Crap" label...kill a guy for trying something new? I get bored putting together little pieces of pottery and checking the crosses to guesstimate a date. Sometimes I long for an ancient bedpan or two just to shakes things up.I'm sure the same goes for Hollywood, and sure, when you try something new its hit or miss...but then I'm getting to the point in my old age where "The Girlfriend Experience" looks more entertaining than another "Oceans" movie and...really, if it strikes out I didn't spend my money to watch the same old film again.In this case he kind of struck out, but it is 2009, its not exactly like you have many choices at the box office these days.Do I want to go see more Aliens and Robots blowing things up, do I want to go see a remake, or do I just want to chill at home and watch "Dog Day Afternoon" again? Oh, wait, Soderbergh's got something that's not exactly like everything else, it's worth a shot.

I first saw the well-known former XXX hardcore porn star in the low budget terrible horror film Smash Cut, and this film from director Steven Soderbergh (Erin Brocjovich, Traffic, Ocean's Eleven) sounded like her kind of territory, and a return to the director's Sex, Lies, and Videotape beginnings. Basically, set during the time of the 2008 Presidential Election, between Barack Obama and John McCain, in the city of Manhattan, the story centres around the life of high class call girl and escort Chelsea, real name Christine (Sasha Grey), and the many challenges she faces between work and her personal life. Chelsea charges $2,000 an hour for all clients from all backgrounds, and for that she offers the "girlfriend experience" (GFE), where she acts like a girlfriend towards her clients, dressing for what they have in mind, whether it is dinner and a movie, or a hotel meeting, she will listen to their conversations, and with mostly business consumed clients they will mostly talk about work and finances, and of course having sex with them. The story sees five non-consecutive days of her life, she is finding recently that she is not seeing as many clients and wanting to make more money, so she arranges to meet a sleazy Interviewer (Mark Jacobson) who has met many other escorts to give them a review of an experience with them, most getting positive description and boosting their profiles to get more clients, but he says he should get a free session. She also has a boyfriend, Chris (Chris Santos), who works as a personal trainer and is aware of what she does for a living, but she has promised him she will never go with a client longer than a single night, so she is going against her rule with this suggestion of spending a weekend or longer with the interviewer, but she insists it is for the sake of making more money. Chelsea is devastated in the time we see that she loses one or two clients who have families and feel great guilt wanting to have sex with her, the interviewer gives her a lacklustre review complaining that despite looking beautiful she does not perform all sexual acts as good as other women he has been with, and not getting personal with clients, or talking about what she has been doing with her boyfriend, the only people she can open up to her female friends and one man at a bar who just wants to talk. Also starring Philip Eytan as Phillip, Glenn Kenny as The Erotic Connoisseur, T. Colby Trane as Waiter, Peter Zizzo as Zizzo, Ron Stein as Vegas Buddy #1, David Levien as David, Alan Milstein as Pete, Dennis Shields as Dennis, Marshall Gilman as Vegas Buddy #2 and Michael Roberts as Vegas Buddy #3. I had seen a few of the hardcore videos of Grey before this, so it was certainly interesting to see her play the prostitute character well enough that you can empathise with her to some extent, she is pretty much the only thing you can watch about this film, because many of the clients along the way blend into each other and seem too similar, besides of course the filthy minded interviewer who just exploits and takes advantage of her, the sexual content is not that frequent but is I suppose necessary, there is not enough focus on an engaging story, and it only gets more interesting in the last few scenes when the lead character's conscience and personal life comes into play, so overall it is an alright enough but lukewarm drama. Okay!

Steven Soderbergh's docudramas are polarizing, although i have nothing against them. However, in The Girlfriend Experience it is unclear whether there is a message, criticism or was it just another artistic experiment.Sasha Grey is surprisingly good, if you bear in mind her previous experience in front of the camera, but the scenario was to weak, in my opinion. We follow Sasha Grey's character as she earns her daily bread as a high-class prostitute.It is a shady world she lives in, yet everything was filmed in such a matter-of-fact manner that i felt neither revulsion nor pity. It was unclear why should a girl such as the main protagonist choose such vocation, which, according to this film, feels like just another line of work.Again, The Girlfriend Experience is almost a documentary, which eventually left me wondering why i'm watching it, at all...

Yes, this film was far from perfect, and I definitely don't give it a 10. However, being that it is actually an homage to certain French New Wave films (Namely Agnes Varda's "Cleo From 5 to 7" and Goddard's "Vivre Sa Vie"), it actually does a pretty good job of doing what it came to do. Unfortunately, this type of thing tends to overestimate the intellect of the American audience, hence the "dull" and "boring" reviews that undoubtedly came from people who find anything with subtitles "lame". Please, guys, if you don't get it, do us all a favor, and stick to what you do get, and don't assume that your ignorance of the subject/style makes it a bad film. More than that, though, remember that just because the internet gives you a forum to speak, that doesn't mean you have to use it. Maybe just go watch "Independence Day" again...