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?

---

Plot Keywords:

presidential election | female nudity | reference to barack obama | call girl | las vegas nevada | 

---

Taglines:

See it with someone you ****

---

Genres:

Drama

---

Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for sexual content, nudity and language

Details

Official Sites:

Official site Official site [Japan]

Country:

USA

Language:

English French

Release Date:

8 July 2009 (France)

Also Known As:

GfE

Filming Locations:

USA

Box Office

Budget:

$1,700,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$204,112, 24 May 2009, Limited Release

Gross USA:

$695,417, 30 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

Steven Soderbergh first heard about Sasha Grey when he read an article in Los Angeles magazine about her.

---

Quotes

Chelsea: [into a phone] So, what are you looking forward to? Do you have anything specific in mind?
David: [voice] Well... you know, after looking at your web site I'd just really love to get together with you. I'm just kind of feeling stressed out. I should probally see a shrink, but it seems more fun to see you.
Chelsea: Why don't you tell me about yourself? Are you married? Do you have kids? What kind of screenplay are you working on?
David: Yes and yes, and no comment.
Chelsea: How many kids do you have?
David: I have two little girls. ...
[...]

---

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.

---

Connections

References Forrest Gump (1994)

---

Soundtracks

Re-Work
Written and Produced by David Holmes
Courtesy of Universal Songs of Polygram International Inc.

User Reviews

The closer to reality, the bigger the distortion

When Rosa Von Praunheim wanted to make a film about Fassbinder's "widows", he just took a camera and went from apartment to apartment, from restaurant to restaurant and filmed what came in front of his camera. The end-product he called a "near-reality" movie. When German journalist Günther Wallraff wanted to document discrimination and racism in German plants, he masked himself as a Turk and worked with hidden cameras. The US-university professor Barbara Ehrenreich did the same some years ago when she wanted to collect material for a study about the working-poor in America.

I wonder why Soderbergh did not the same and just followed a real call-girl through a representative couple of days, thereby illustrating the different aspects of her work. Pseudo-documentaries are almost worthless because the border between fiction and reality is too close, and still in this closeness there is the biggest lie which every audience senses deeply. Instead of that he spent 2 millions of dollars which he filmed through in only a couple of days. Did he pay the 2'000 dollars which Sasha Gray probably gets in reality? It would be a fruitful experiment to calculate the minutes together during which she is shown in the 77 minutes movie.

Unfortunately, the movie is neither a stylized product of genre-crossing nor can it be taken for experimental work - it is mostly comparable with that TV series that the late Ede Zimmermann invented in the Germany of the late 50ies - where actual criminal deeds were played by actors and broadcast on TV in the hope that someone would be a witness of the real crime. Here, the imitation fulfilled practical purposes, but in "The Girlfriend Experience? - What is it then, that Soderbergh wanted to show? That even "love" and not only sex can be bought? - But oh no, he is already a while on this world, isn't he?