The Girlfriend Experience (2009)

    Soderbergh’s films are pretty hit and miss as a whole but migrate towards the positive end of the spectrum.  It is not immediately apparent just where on the scale this film sits.  The 2009 experimental drama received mixed critical reviews and, not surprisingly, didn’t fare too well at the box office.  Upon reflection, though, it becomes quite apparent that this is a far cry from the super independent experiment Soderbergh conducted back in 2005.  Bubble was mostly unwatchable and while it may have achieved something for the filmmaker personally, did nothing for his audience.
    The Girlfriend Experience is much easier to justify from a spectator standpoint.  Shot with the wunderkind of cameras, the RedOne, it juxtaposes a handheld, overexposed subjectivity reminiscent of Ocean’s 12 with a carefully composed, architecturally sound interior world of glass and steel.  These frames are much more interesting, much emptier emotionally.  The inhospitality of these environments, all hard lines with sharply defined edges, may mirror the attachment absent in the main character.  The apartment even, lit smoothly and beautifully with what should be a warm red glow, remains cold in a wide and unceasing master shot.  The closest we ever get to two characters actually connecting in the classic shot/ reverse shot is between the escort and a reporter, secluding themselves to window seats in a restaurant.  Just as the viewer remains physically distant from all characters so do the characters fail to connect themselves.
    Chelsea fashions herself a high-class escort providing paid-for emotional attachment to her clients while at the same time maintaining a relationship with her boyfriend.  We rarely see their connection, rather, we see them living out their independent lives that occasionally cross and eventually disintegrate.  All human interactions in the film, as there is really no other kind here, retain as sense of everyday realism.  Their world is not exceedingly cinematic; Chelsea’s profession is not exploited like most other films would likely handle it.  (The fact that Sasha Grey’s name promotes the movie is another story.)  The conversations, especially if one is expecting more, come off as mundane, yet appropriately so.  The closest we come is a john promising a career-building week in Dubai full of cocaine, rich Indian businessmen, and skyscraping hotels; the type of location most prostitute movies would inhabit.  Naturally, the reviewer turns out an insulting review of her services.
    Soderbergh’s film is a languid exploration approaching urban ennui.  Nearly all of her rich clients report on their crumbling economic status, spending much of their paid for time talking rather than…  Yet we never see anyone do much of anything.  The exception being the gym, where mindless minions perfect their bodies, presumably for sex with whomever.  There exists a bleakness to the world; the sun never seems to shine.  The only sense of energy comes from street musicians who provide a contrastingly upbeat soundtrack for spurts of time only to be cut out abruptly.  Experiment is certainly the right word for the film and its success is debatable.  Yet in its completion it strikes the right chord, at least for me at the time.  So what more can be said about a film that feels like something more must be said?  Just that, that it is easy to consider this film more meaningful than it is.  Or perhaps it is that meaningful, you’ll have to decide for yourself.