The Girlfriend Experience (2009)

A drama set in the days leading up to the 2008 Presidential election, and centered on a high-end Manhattan call girl meeting the challenges of her boyfriend, her clients, and her work.

Director:

Steven Soderbergh

Writers:

David Levien, Brian Koppelman

Stars:

Sasha Grey, Chris Santos, Philip Eytan

1 nomination.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Sasha Grey	...	Chelsea / Christine
Chris Santos	...	Chris
Philip Eytan	...	Phillip
Colby Trane	...	Waiter (as T. Colby Trane)
Peter Zizzo	...	Zizzo
Ron Stein	...	Vegas Buddy #1
Marshall Gilman	...	Vegas Buddy #2
Michael Roberts	...	Vegas Buddy #3
Vincent Dellacera	...	Chelsea's Driver
Jim Kempner	...	Art Gallery Owner
David Levien	...	David
Mark Jacobson	...	Interviewer
Alan Milstein	...	Pete
Sukhdev Singh	...	Chris & Chelsea's Super
Ted Jessup	...	Chatty 'John'

Storyline

Chelsea (Sasha Grey) is a high-priced $2,000-an-hour call girl in Manhattan, offering a 'girlfriend experience': she'll dress with the client in mind, go to dinner and a movie, listen attentively to talk about work and finances, and she'll provide sex. It's October, 2008: a presidential election nears and the economy is in free fall. She has a boyfriend, Chris (Chris Santos), who's a personal trainer. We are shown five non-consecutive days in Chelsea's life. She's working on her Web page, talking to image consultants, and being interviewed by a reporter. She asks clients when their birthdays are and uses that for an astrological prediction. She's drawn to a new client, a writer from L.A. Should she break her rules for him? What if it risks her relationship with Chris? Should she invest in gold?

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Plot Keywords:

client | presidential election | personal trainer | economy | call girl | 

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Taglines:

See it with someone you ****

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Genres:

Drama

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Certificate:

14A

Details

Official Sites:

Official site Official site [Japan]

Country:

USA

Language:

English French

Release Date:

8 July 2009 (France)

Also Known As:

Confesiones de una prostituta de lujo

Filming Locations:

Las Vegas, Nevada, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$1,700,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend:

$204,112 (USA) (22 May 2009)

Gross:

$695,417 (USA) (28 August 2009)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Magnolia Pictures, 2929 Productions, Extension 765

Technical Specs

Runtime:

77 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital DTS

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

"Girlfriend experience" is a form of sex work (paid-for female companionship) in which a female prostitute behaves like a male client's girlfriend or shows (artificial) emotional intimacy beyond the sex act.

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Quotes

Chelsea: [voice-over] I met with Phillipe on October 5th and 6th. I wore a Michael Kors dress and shoes with La Perla lingerie underneath, and diamond stud earrings. We met at 7:30 PM at the hotel, and had a drink downstairs. He liked my dress but didn't go into detail why, and didn't mention anything else about my appearance. We ate dinner at Blue Hill. Phillipe didn't ask for a menu and had the chef serve us a five-course meal, a different wine with each course. We went to the 9:40 PM showing of 'Man ...

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Crazy Credits

After the end credits, there's a brief scene of Chelsea washing a client's hair as he sits in a bathtub and talks about John McCain.

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Connections

Featured in 2010 AVN Awards Show (2010)

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Soundtracks

Man in Back
Written and Performed by Shakerleg
Courtesy of Bleeding Hands Music

User Reviews

Bleh! Don't waste your time. Even if it is Soderbergh.

OK, somewhere between 1 and 5.. Look, I'm a fairly big Soderbergh fan, Solaris - perfect!, Kafka (where can I buy this now!!), Sex Lies., The Good German and etc.. But what the heck was this movie? I was waiting during the entire movie for the "it's about to get interesting", it has to get interesting because the acting sucks.. right?.. "it's just about to get.. " nope. It never was interesting. And oh I had high hopes for Sasha, not that I know who she is because I had to look her up on Google. But because I love to root for the underdog - thinking just maybe a porn star really could break into mainstream. Oh right, that kinda sorta did happen once from that porn star from the 80's Traci lords.

Despite how 'high brow' Sasha is supposed to be, she was anything but barely interesting during the entire movie. I'm not sure if it was her acting or the script. Hard to tell.

Seriously, this is bad indie at best. It was almost like it was trying to be an indie film, but Sasha Grey didn't have really any interesting lines, she just sat there with uninteresting (understatement) responses. She did cry well, that was about the most challenging part - again the script.

Too bad, I thought this was going to be good by reading those reviews on the box (ah, suckered in by the reviews again!),

I never write reviews about anything. I had to sign up for IMDb just to write this. :) Other than this film, however, Soderbergh rocks, and Sasha Grey probably could act if challenged. She is certainly interesting to look at both in the screen charisma sense and in the other sense.

Well, it was only 5 bucks at BB and 2 hours of my time.