The Girlfriend Experience: real-life pornstar's foray into more traditional acting

Oh it also has Steven Soderbergh as the director, if that does anything for ya!...

I first encountered the fact that this film so much as existed when I was shopping a list of what one user called "underrated films" and I tend to enjoy hidden gems so I figured I would give it a go.

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I'm not the most avid consumer of porn, but even I know who Sasha Grey is and by the way, her real name is Marina Hantzis. Porn stars aren't generally known for having good acting chops and the dialogue that they do is normally pretty funny and often parodied in other things. Let's be honest though, people aren't watching in order to hear them talk.

Let's stay on topic though and actually discuss the film... lol

This is considered a "slice-of-life" film which basically means that it jumps all over the place and features the dialogue of many characters discussing things as if it was a reality show. This can be something that annoys a lot of viewers and that was often the case with me because it apparently is a directorial decision to have some of the cameras be intentionally shaky as if they were being filmed by a phone - they might actually have been filmed by a phone.

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This type of filming often features shot with strange camera angles where you can't even see everyone that is in the scene and in on particularly annoying scene we see a bunch of people on a private jet that are talking over one another and are being drowned out by the sound of the jet engines. I guess that is artsy for some, for me it was just something I wanted to fast-forward through because the dialogue in a lot of these scenes is not really at all important to the real story here.

So what is the story?

High-end escort / call-girl named "Chelsea", played by surprise! The only porn star in the film, is facing a sort of downturn in her profits because her clients are starting to feel the crunch of the downturn in the economy and she is getting less and less work. Her style of escort is that she provides, like the name of the film suggests, a "girlfriend experience" where she hangs out and pretends to actually care about her clients and as is showcased in the film, for many of them she genuinely does care about them.

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She flies a little too close to the sun with one of them though and decides to go away and meet him for a weekend, which is one of the boundaries that her and her live-in boyfriend have already set as being off-limits, but she is rather cold towards her boyfriend who is a personal trainer (of course) when she decides to get closer to one of her clients. I didn't think of it at the time, but it appears as though once the money stopped flowing like it had been, one of her clients was able to flip the script on her and gave her the "husband experience."

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While this is all going on Chelsea is also meeting with a journalist who is intrigued by her life and how it operates and it is during these sessions that we end up getting a lot of "tell not show" information about what is going on. While I often consider this tactic to be quite lazy in films it would be impossible to convey this information otherwise and therefore it was necessary.

This isn't porn by the way. In fact, Sasha Gray only gets naked a couple of times in the entire thing and this is quite tastefully done - which is a huge departure from what she is used to, no doubt.

This film is about much more than just being an escort. It is about how a change in the economy affects everyone, and it is also about the vulnerabilities of everyone who is just looking in the end, for companionship and also how even for someone as stunning as Chelsea whose entire life is based around her looks and appeal factor, that she is still filled with situations where she is filled with feelings of inadequacy.

Should I watch it?

Honestly, I think that for most people this one is going to bore them. The artsy way that it was done will appeal to some but even though I consider myself a cinema-aholic of sorts, I don't normally fall for this sort of thing and prefer a more straight-forward method of story-telling. At times it gets to be kind of confusing as to what the hell is even going on as names are not often said and it becomes difficult to keep up with who is who. There are a lot of characters as you would expect from a film about and escort, and it can be a bit much to keep up with.

That being said Sasha Gray surprised me and she actually has some pretty great acting abilities that probably will shock most people that are at all familiar with her other work.

This film did very poorly at the box office and didn't break even. No real surprise there as it was never going to get a widespread release. This film is not what you expect it to be and that is a plus, but the slow-moving story and attempts at artistic expression rather than "normal" presentation you expect in a film is going to piss off a lot of potential viewers.

The soundtrack is incredible, that much I am certain of

_{this one is a bit more difficult to find. It isn't streaming as part of any major service but can be rented on Vudu as well as Amazon Prime.. perhaps others}