The system rewards Steven Soderbergh and he pays his Faustian debt with haughty judgments. Soderbergh’s new film The Girlfriend Experience is the most unironic celebration of materialist privilege since Woody Allen’s Reagan-era heralds Manhattan and Hannah and Her Sisters.
Already proclaimed, even in the alternative media, The Girlfriend Experience paints a gaudy face on the whoredom to which every powerful person in New York, it sometimes seems, has consented. Narcissistic media can’t even resist its fun-house mirror reflection. Problem is: The Girlfriend Experience really isn’t fun (or funny, as Manhattan and Hannah occasionally were).
High-priced call girl Chelsea (Sasha Grey) promises customers on-the-meter intimacy of the film’s title. Chelsea’s name is a nom de fuck, which intentionally evokes the bigmoney, gallery-choked section of Manhattan.
Her “committed” relationship with possibly gay physical trainer Chris (Chris Santos) illustrates the chasm between money and love. (This conveniently coincided with early news of the economic recession during the film’s production.) For a semi-documentary approach, like his similarly morose Bubble, Soderbergh cast porn performer Grey (she doesn’t earn the tag “actress”) plus other non-thespians (including writer Mark Jacobson, who’s shown interviewing Chelsea) as if realistically catching contemporary professional types in this moment of moral and financial reckoning. It’s a millennial dirge for people who don’t know the spiritual/materialist crisis Godard predicted in Nouvelle Vague.
Thankfully, a film version of Noel Coward’s Easy Virtue, about a globetrotting American girl who opposes the hypocrisy of the British class system, also opens this week. Its buoyancy exposes Soderbergh’s scornful, puritanical pretenses: Proto-feminist winner of the Monte Carlo Grand Prix, Larita (Jessica Biel) affects people differently than Chelsea. Chatty Larita has exotic energy. “She looks like money!” the Brits gasp. Biel’s warmth and sexy Yankee strut naturally challenge Old European aristocracy whereas Chelsea/Grey’s impassivity dulls Soderbergh’s already-false critique.
Scrutinizing fast-lane Wall Streeters rather than Grey’s porn industry is a dodge. The A-list restaurants and shops on view resemble the glitzy, high-roller luxe of Soderbergh’s star-packed Ocean’s Eleven franchise, yet this star-deprived indie scolds what Soderbergh celebrates with his elite friends. Girlfriend replays Oceans emphasizing its Hollywood-sleaze essence. It dissolves the distance between the studios and their banks into Chelsea and Chris angling for bigger scores, richer customers—while deceiving each other.Without sustainable skills or definite aspirations, they’re not just money-hungry, they’re money-frantic. Soderbergh may secretly despise the industry’s venality but only half admits it. It turns him on.