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May 1, 2009
GFE
The Girlfriend Experience is a functional piece of cinema, given a bit of meta-oomph by its spot in the careers of its director and star. It's a Steven Soderbergh film starring Sasha Grey; beyond that, it's worth is fleeting. Soderbergh vacillates, on an almost picture-to-picture basis, between employing genuinely evocative structures to tell his stories and simply lining up a series of cool shots. This is a clear cut case of the latter, but when those cool shots are occupied by someone with Grey's notoriety, they're invested with bit more novelty than they'd otherwise have.
What's really interesting about the film, however, is the time period to which Soderbergh's tethered it. The film is set so squarely within a few weeks of October, 2008 that the casual dialogue is at times almost cringe-worthy - its references are too fresh, too specific. I think, though, that ten years from now, it'll be uniquely fascinating for precisely the same reason. A work of art can be contemporary in two ways: it can find a way to make its issues forwards compatible, or it can batten those hatches and proudly post date itself. By that token, this film could just as aptly have been titled Bubble as Soderbergh's last HDNet experiment - which is directly referenced here (as seen below).
This inside joke is mildly annoying on the one hand, but on the other it's a nice reminder of what Soderbergh is doing with this series of films - and in spite of my lukewarm reaction to his installment, I fully support his experimentation, and look forward to seeing one which begets the same precise focus which I think he found in Bubbble. That film worked beautifully on the big screen; The Girlfriend Experience, fittingly, doesn't require the same commitment, and perhaps works best on a computer screen, streaming over the internet, which is precisely how I watched it (never fear - I paid for it).
There is exactly one scene in the film in which the themes of sex and commerce and human connectivity transcend simple didacticism and become something complex and, indeed, cinematic. Grey disappears and Soderbergh's method does too; this scene accomplishes in a few minutes everything the movie as a whole sets out to do, and does so beautifully. And then it ends, and so does the movie, because Soderbergh knows what he's doing, and he's wisely saved the best for last.
Posted by David Lowery at May 1, 2009 9:42 PM
Comments
i too, applaud him for stretching his film muscles and exploring and experimenting. but i can't say i'm a fan of those experimentations. i saw the trailer at the dobie last night. the trailer alone made me want to stay away. i'm anxious for him to go back to big pictures and fun stories for a little while.
Posted by: kat candler at May 2, 2009 11:57 AM
I'd much rather watch one of Soderbergh's failed experiments than Ocean's 14.
Posted by: Zak Forsman at May 2, 2009 4:30 PM
I agree wholeheartedly. Ocean's 13 was creatively bankrupt.
Posted by: David Lowery at May 2, 2009 4:53 PM
i missed out on the sequels but i had a fun, silly time in the first one. and bubble, well, hmmm, yeah ... not so much.
Posted by: kat candler at May 4, 2009 8:40 PM
Agreed on the first Oceans film. But after that it's all about Solaris and Che.
Posted by: David Lowery at May 5, 2009 2:23 AM
once again, my friend, you said it better than i ever could have. i can appreciate what he's doing on an intellectual but when it comes to experiencing it, not so much. it's that question of "how do you make a movie about boredom but not make it boring." with TGE, it's how do you make a movie about vapidity and not make it unbearably vapid? i don't think Soderbergh won that contest this time around.
Posted by: tully at May 5, 2009 7:51 AM