Last night I couldn't sleep so I watched a Steven Soderbergh movie in the hopes that it would assist me to that end. I should have watched Eclipse instead, because I was not lulled to sleep as I expected to be. Instead, I really enjoyed this movie! I'm as divided on Steven Soderbergh as I am on experimental (and/or) art films in general; it always seems like a good idea and almost never is. And yet every time I get burned, I keep coming back. I watched the entirety of fucking Timecode, okay? That is how serious my problem is. And movies like Soderbergh's own Full Frontal and even Sex, Lies and Videotape never did anything for me even though I hoped they would. When I heard he was planning on retiring from directing after two more films, I was sort of relieved! But of course, there will always be other experimental directors to tempt me. I've been avoiding the Duplass Brothers like the plague, but I can feel my resolve weakening.
I thought I was getting over this destructive habit; last week I gave up on The Exploding Girl, a mumblecore-ish film starring Zoe Kazan as a lethargic epileptic. That I had the self-preservation instinct to pull myself away from a movie I was not enjoying was big for me--I have been, after all, reading and blogging about Twilight for a year. But The Girlfriend Experience threatens to undermine my progress.
The story follows Chelsea, or maybe Christine, and her boyfriend Chris. Chelsea is a prostitute and Chris is a personal trainer, occupations the movie depicts as more or less the same (though being a prostitute seems a little more difficult). The fractured structure of the movie is such that every event is unfolding at the same time: Chelsea is thinking about going away for a weekend with a client, she is in a car on her way to that weekend away, she is arguing with her boyfriend about possibly going, she is being interviewed by a journalist an unclear amount of time later, she is mulling over her career options in between. There is no "and then this happens, and then this happens." There is no chronology to the plot whatsoever.
Soderbergh knows how to compose a shot, and there are so many gorgeous images of cities and interiors, with notably fast and interesting editing for such a film, that eventually you reach a sort of critical mass of prettiness. The films is overwhelmingly blue and gold, and there is probably a term like chiaroscuro for it, but anyway it very much appeals to my aesthetic taste.
The film is set before the 2008 election, and Chelsea's clients are obsessed with the financial crisis. It's the basis for some rather subtle satire. Toward the beginning of the film, we see them all prattling on about it--complaining about how screwed they are, giving her advice, etc.--and the dialog reaches critical mass faster than the images do. It very deliberately starts to sound like nonsense. These miserable, rich assholes are complaining and worrying to a call girl, after all, and we learn that many of them don't even have sex with her; they pay her for the company. Chelsea believes in a vague kind of birthday-centered mysticism, and the bullshit she spouts about it is no more or less ridiculous than the financial advice we hear. Chelsea and Chris have nebulous financial aspirations, and the scenes in which they hustle have an understated air of futility.
There is virtually no sex in the movie, and scarcely any nudity. I suppose I should mention that Chelsea/Christine is played by Sasha Grey, who is elsewhere a porn star. (I did not actually know that--I swear!--until I read an article about this movie during its theatrical release. In fact, I told my wife that an ad for the film caught my eye in the newspaper because the girl sort of looked like her. Whoops.) I'm not sure that matters, though there's certainly a valid way to view the film if you want to keep that thought foremost: Chelsea is a kind of deliberately dead, cold presence at the center of the film. This is not a hooker with a heart of gold. She is, almost uniformly, emotionally impenetrable. You wonder how much of that is a put on and how much of that is real, is a necessity when you have sex for a living. But I chose not to look at it that way, because it isn't really on the page, so to speak, and also it's really depressing to think about.
The fulcrum of the movie, such as there is one, is that Chelsea is thinking about going away for the weekend with a client, and starts to mentally blur the line between clients and potential partners. She is, after all, in a "committed relationship" with Chris. Any kind of predictable and potentially stupid "dude, you're okay with your girl having sex with other guys?" talk is blissfully absent from the film, but one of the rules Chris and Chelsea have is no field trips. What happens surrounding that trip, and a potential trip Chris might take with a client of his own, is complex and interesting.
The worst thing I can say about this movie is that it is 76 minutes long and it feels like it is 760 minutes long. Maybe that was because I was watching it late at night and was irritated by my own sudden-onset insomnia. But the deliberate absence of forward momentum might be tough for some to take. Then again, you are reading this blog, so you should be fine. The Girlfriend Experience is available on Netflix Instant.
The story follows Chelsea, or maybe Christine, and her boyfriend Chris. Chelsea is a prostitute and Chris is a personal trainer, occupations the movie depicts as more or less the same (though being a prostitute seems a little more difficult). The fractured structure of the movie is such that every event is unfolding at the same time: Chelsea is thinking about going away for a weekend with a client, she is in a car on her way to that weekend away, she is arguing with her boyfriend about possibly going, she is being interviewed by a journalist an unclear amount of time later, she is mulling over her career options in between. There is no "and then this happens, and then this happens." There is no chronology to the plot whatsoever.
Soderbergh knows how to compose a shot, and there are so many gorgeous images of cities and interiors, with notably fast and interesting editing for such a film, that eventually you reach a sort of critical mass of prettiness. The films is overwhelmingly blue and gold, and there is probably a term like chiaroscuro for it, but anyway it very much appeals to my aesthetic taste.
The film is set before the 2008 election, and Chelsea's clients are obsessed with the financial crisis. It's the basis for some rather subtle satire. Toward the beginning of the film, we see them all prattling on about it--complaining about how screwed they are, giving her advice, etc.--and the dialog reaches critical mass faster than the images do. It very deliberately starts to sound like nonsense. These miserable, rich assholes are complaining and worrying to a call girl, after all, and we learn that many of them don't even have sex with her; they pay her for the company. Chelsea believes in a vague kind of birthday-centered mysticism, and the bullshit she spouts about it is no more or less ridiculous than the financial advice we hear. Chelsea and Chris have nebulous financial aspirations, and the scenes in which they hustle have an understated air of futility.
There is virtually no sex in the movie, and scarcely any nudity. I suppose I should mention that Chelsea/Christine is played by Sasha Grey, who is elsewhere a porn star. (I did not actually know that--I swear!--until I read an article about this movie during its theatrical release. In fact, I told my wife that an ad for the film caught my eye in the newspaper because the girl sort of looked like her. Whoops.) I'm not sure that matters, though there's certainly a valid way to view the film if you want to keep that thought foremost: Chelsea is a kind of deliberately dead, cold presence at the center of the film. This is not a hooker with a heart of gold. She is, almost uniformly, emotionally impenetrable. You wonder how much of that is a put on and how much of that is real, is a necessity when you have sex for a living. But I chose not to look at it that way, because it isn't really on the page, so to speak, and also it's really depressing to think about.
The fulcrum of the movie, such as there is one, is that Chelsea is thinking about going away for the weekend with a client, and starts to mentally blur the line between clients and potential partners. She is, after all, in a "committed relationship" with Chris. Any kind of predictable and potentially stupid "dude, you're okay with your girl having sex with other guys?" talk is blissfully absent from the film, but one of the rules Chris and Chelsea have is no field trips. What happens surrounding that trip, and a potential trip Chris might take with a client of his own, is complex and interesting.
The worst thing I can say about this movie is that it is 76 minutes long and it feels like it is 760 minutes long. Maybe that was because I was watching it late at night and was irritated by my own sudden-onset insomnia. But the deliberate absence of forward momentum might be tough for some to take. Then again, you are reading this blog, so you should be fine. The Girlfriend Experience is available on Netflix Instant.
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