{"id":745,"date":"2009-09-08T01:31:16","date_gmt":"2009-09-07T15:31:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/?p=745"},"modified":"2009-09-08T01:35:09","modified_gmt":"2009-09-07T15:35:09","slug":"the-girlfriend-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/?p=745","title":{"rendered":"The Girlfriend Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ironic that Rowan and I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t pay for The Girlfriend Experience<\/em>. We made our way to the cinema through the worst kind of storm (the sort that lasts only as long as it takes you to get from point A to B) to see Ponyo<\/em>, only to find that it had been cancelled due to an accidental double booking for a festival called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Queerdoc\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, which I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m assuming was tonight featuring a documentary about lesbians.<\/p>\n

They said that they were sorry, but that they could comp us tickets to anything else that night. Not willing to wait around two and a half hours to see the late Ponyo, <\/em>we decided to see The Girlfriend Experience <\/em>instead. Then, during dinner, I realised that this was still a Soderbergh<\/em> movie, and that it would finish in time for the late showing of Ponyo<\/em>. We bought tickets for Ponyo <\/em>before we went into The Girlfriend Experience<\/em>, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be honest: I spent a great deal of The Girlfriend Experience <\/em>looking forward to seeing Ponyo<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Rowan said, at the end of the screening, that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the first movie I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen in a long time that I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t like at least a part of\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not that extreme, but really: The Girlfriend Experience <\/em>is like a more airheaded, shallow version of Gawker. The sad fact is that the movie seems to reflect a certain reality: people like this exist, and they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re just as horrible as they appear on the screen.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Girlfriend Experience <\/em>is the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153story\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of Christine\/Chelsea (porn star Sasha Grey in what is credited as her first \u00e2\u20ac\u0153mainstream\u00e2\u20ac\u009d role \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but her other work has probably reached a wider audience and was easier to appreciate), an escort who has a boyfriend. According to press materials this film showcases five days in her life.<\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not told in a linear fashion and is interspersed with seemingly pointless scenes from a private jet being flown to Vegas. The dialogue is so real it hurts \u00e2\u20ac\u201c painful in its banality and circularity. The realisation of The Girlfriend Experience <\/em>is that Soderbergh has somehow used banality to draw attention away from the film\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s banality. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a master work, to a certain definition of both of the words in that term. Soderbergh cuts away to different parts of the same encounters, each scene basically a reiteration of a previous one with boring clients who shed no light on either themselves or on Chelsea\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s profession. He distracts with vaguely interesting cinematography, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not enough.<\/p>\n

When people aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t talking about the nature of Chelsea\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s job, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re talking about the economy and how they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re all doing so poorly. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s exactly what my nightmare of high pretentious society talk looks like, and it plays out on the big screen. What no one seems to have told these people is that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s incredibly difficult to feel sympathy for someone complaining about the downturn in their personal fortunes when they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re relating it to you from their private jet flying to Vegas<\/em>. This is a reality, true, but not all realities demand being committed to celluloid. Not everyone that you want to punch in the face needs their screen time.<\/p>\n

When we are <\/em>talking about Chelsea\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s job, we are made to judge. In reality, this is a subject I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve read a fair bit about as part of the background noise of life. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not something that I think is necessarily an evil of society, but the participants here: white slaver and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153connoisseur\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, creepy close attached guy, foot fetishist, screenwriter and … Frenchman … are all so vapid and bland that you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t help but think them pathetic. To be honest I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve never cast my mind as far as to actually think that much on \u00e2\u20ac\u0153hobbyists\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, but The Girlfriend Experience <\/em>sells them as horrors from the deep, and honestly they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re all that Chelsea really deserves.<\/p>\n

The boyfriend plot is weak, and the boyfriend is honestly a worse person than Chelsea could ever hope to be. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a pretentious personal trainer who doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t, like, play by the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153rules\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, man. Why should he have to wear a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153uniform\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to his \u00e2\u20ac\u0153job\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, man? He doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t need to be \u00e2\u20ac\u0153branded\u00e2\u20ac\u009d by \u00e2\u20ac\u0153society\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, man. Actually, he would have been so much cooler if that was how he actually spoke. What I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve written is a pretty accurate representation of the guy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s essence, and it is a mark of my disdain for him that I could not be bothered looking up his name.<\/p>\n

In the final analysis, Chelsea, her boyfriend, his friends and most of her clients are absolutely detestable. A movie can function with unlikable characters, but this one dies by them. The acting is fine, but acting cannot always overcome dismal themes and scripting. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s written naturally, but natural dialogue frequently isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the greatest fit for the cinema and this is the same here. Sasha Grey could conceivably make it as a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153real\u00e2\u20ac\u009d actor (who says that pornography isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a legitimate outlet for the dramatic urges?), but Soderbergh does her no favours here: she fails to carry a piece that collapses under its own leaden pretentiousness. The male actors, while serviceable (hah!) look so alike as to be interchangeable \u00e2\u20ac\u201c although I suppose this may have been the point.<\/p>\n

The Girlfriend Experience <\/em>chooses to end around the time an overweight Zionist Republican shows his hand, and Chelsea shows her leopard-print clad buttocks. By this point they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve worn out their welcome: has Chelsea ruined her chances for a happy relationship with her boyfriend? It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hard to tell, certainly, and much harder to give a damn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ironic that Rowan and I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t pay for The Girlfriend Experience. We made our way to the cinema through the worst kind of storm (the sort that lasts only as long as it takes you to get from point A to B) to see Ponyo, only to find that it had been cancelled due to an accidental double booking for a festival called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Queerdoc\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, which I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m assuming was tonight featuring a documentary about lesbians. They said that they were sorry, but that they could comp us tickets to anything else that night. Not willing to wait around two and <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1HLZ6-c1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=745"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":747,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745\/revisions\/747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}