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MOVIE REVIEW
'The Girlfriend Experience'
By Robert Abele
Steven Soderbergh's high-def video bauble "The Girlfriend Experience" is an exquisitely filmed piece of urban impressionism that, unfortunately, leaves one feeling that a sleek gadget has been needlessly purchased.
Set on the eve of the 2008 election, it takes a time-shifting Godard-ian glide through a week in the life of Chelsea (porn star Sasha Grey), a high-end Manhattan call girl whose specialty -- codified by the title -- lies in the sympathetic ear that gives a nurturing spin to the body's closing of the deal.
It's a concept more interesting than it plays, however, since the more dramatic elements -- Chelsea's arrangement with an online sex connoisseur (film critic Glenn Kenny), her risk in deepening a relationship with a new client -- never catch fire under Soderbergh's cold, determinedly hall-of-mirrors anti-style. Whether Grey, in her first "straight" gig, has character chops or not feels inconsequential when her affectless delivery becomes a referenced joke toward the end. With a tone of lush disappointment set from the opening frames, "The Girlfriend Experience" is a compelling monotony, but one that's never quite pleasure, never quite pain and, therefore, never quite an experience. calendar@latimes.com To order a reprint of this article, please click here. |
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