Netflix Minute: The Girlfriend Experience

Netflix Minute is a weekly feature highlighting a title from Netflix's catalog of instant view films. If you want to spend a night snuggled up with a bag of popcorn and don't want to drive to the video store, this is for you.

Steven Soderbergh is a pretty prolific director. He knows what he wants to do and he gets it done. With a large stable of solid, popular actors clearly willing to work on his projects, Soderbergh dominates the mainstream at will while still commanding relative unknowns in small films you may have never heard of. In the case of The Girlfriend Experience, he caught a little flak for blurring the line between the two, seemingly casting an adult film actress as a means to sensationalize what would otherwise be an art-house project.

Fortunately, I think the strongest part of Soderbergh's 2009 film is the honesty with which each of the characters is acted. Sasha Grey plays the titular role of a woman who makes a living as an escort who provides a "girlfriend experience", meaning she tries to fit a customer's expectations while maintaining a degree of personal interaction and conventional relationship activities. Grey had no true big screen acting experience before The Girlfriend Experience and it shows, but luckily the structure of the film begs the actors to be as human and organic as possible.

The structure contributes to the film nearly as much as the plot, which is to say not very much. The spartan story is told in relatively short sequences often placed out of order. The film provides a look into the life of a call girl trying to maintain some dignity along the way, which ultimately feels more like a sideways glance at the life of someone just trying to get by in extenuating circumstances. For instance, the viewer gains some insight in what it'd be like to maintain a serious relationship while providing this seemingly conflicting service at the same time. However, with a little bit of digestion this scenario might help frame a relationship that's plagued by severely conflicting interests or even simply professional roadblocks to commitment.  In this way, I feel like the story has a way of appealing to some people's lives without directly relating at all.

The Girlfriend Experience has some weaknesses that shouldn't be overlooked. Some of the storytelling seems aimless despite a taut runtime, for instance dabbling into politics with no major effect on the overarching narrative. The acting is weak in spots, though the central roles are fairly well cast. When it comes down to it, much of positivity about this film is derived from my interpretation of it, not exactly what work itself. As a result, The Girlfriend Experience may not be the best movie out there, but it does manage to ask some interesting questions that are worth 77 minutes of your time.

Score: 4 out of 5
Confused about our scoring system? Read this explanation.