The Girlfriend Experience is an indie movie about a girl and a guy who are in an open relationship and live together. She is an escort while he is a gym trainer. The film follows her around for five days and it is revealed that she is very upscale, pulling in amazing amounts of cash-money as she wheels and deals with some robust Manhattan elites. One of her clients piques her interest more than usual and she decides that she needs to see if there is some kind of magic there or something.
This movie is a piece of crap. Firstly, the decision to take prolific porn star Sasha Grey and make her an escort in a feature length film instead of a “normal” was a stupid one. Hey everyone! She has range! Check it out! We made her a hooker! Second, the editing is slipshod and sloppy; often I couldn’t decide where in time the characters were at any given moment and couldn’t connect with anything anyone was saying. I didn’t understand what the hell was going on for at least half the film; since I’m not the sharpest tool in the drawer already maybe someone can explain the flood of blurry close-ups and gratuitous overuse of flat angles to me?
Finally, and perhaps most damning, is the shitty acting. You know those Barely Legal porn movies that open with a girl saying “Dear Diary, today I was riding home from school thinking about how I’m still a virgin?” There are a lot of dispassionately similar monologues used here, perhaps to draw some cheap connection to Sasha’s roots for some reason. Completely unnecessary. Throw in some line-reads that lack any emotion or grit and a retarded ending that suggests everyone involved sort of gave up on the whole affair. In the end, we have a confused girlfriend experience that fails to connect even on the most visceral level and is a complete waste of time. I’m sorry, Sasha. Call me and we’ll talk about it.
ThomFiles 