"The Girlfriend Experience" is another fascinating Soderbergh effort, in hindsight a precursor to "Contagion". Some unformed thoughts...
1. Every scene here revolves around money, upgrading one's business or advertising/self-promotion. Every character is busy trying to "take it to the next level", desperate to "up their income", rake in more cash, conquer the competition and expand their client base.
2. Like "Eyes Wide Shut", this is a world in which everybody is a commodity, indiscriminately passed around and traded. Unlike Kubrick's film, however, everyone here is quite happy to network, pimp, share information and engage in mutual exploitation. But money is not neutral. Ever.
3. Conversations throughout the film feel more like boardroom meetings or job interviews and the film's central romance is essentially one big business negotiation.
4. The precursor here is Antonioni via Kubrick. Still, it's a very throw-away film. Soderbergh needs to put more effort into his "art house" pictures. His Blockbusters look lovely; this is rushed.
5. The film's central character is played by Sasha Grey, a pornographic actress. There is some self-reference in the casting: Grey is herself a fairly driven personality, relentlessly using the film/Hollywood/porn scene to promote her name. Still, the film questions the lines between ambition and degradation.
6. In the film, Sasha follows a new age religion based on "books" and "numbers". Like a stock market spreadsheet, this mathematical religion essentially assigns numerical values and "worth" to people and things. Sasha dumps her boyfriend and "upgardes" to a new man based purely on the "religious signs" generated by this religion. The big shock of the film is that the wholly irrational "number religion" - a kind of comic take on late capitalism and free-market fundamentalism - fails Sasha and allows her to leave a man who genuinely loved her. IE: it is genuine human relationships that are meaningful, rather than cold economic currency.
7. You'd think that a film called "The Girlfriend Experience", which centres on a high class hooker, would examine Sasha's clientèle and show how she copes with the multiple "personalities" and "fantasies" which she must generate and project for her various customers. But no. There is no sex in this film (the sex, the whoring, is implicitly the exchange of currency - the commodification of all bodies) and Sasha's interactions with her clients are kept to a minimum. When we do see Sasha with her customers, she adopts a blank, very uncluttered, very uninterested, tone. Rather than create fantasy personas for her clients, the implication is that she is a blank slate upon which her customers project their desires. Sasha need not do anything more than turn up to her appointments and exist as a screen for these projections to take place.
8. All Sasha's clients are implicitly aware that they're paying for a fraud. It's a consensual charade. The "faith-system" runs on shared make believe. When faith runs own...the system crashes.
9. The cliché in these situations is that the client falls romantically for the hooker/stripper/call girl, not realising that it's all an act, but in Sorderbergh's film the reverse occurs. It is Sasha who naively falls for the customer, believing that he genuinely cares for her and intends to leave his wife and family to live with her. In a society where fantasies rapidly proliferate, it is now some pastoral, domestic bliss, some realm of innocence "outside" the board-game, that Sasha longingly wish for.
10. By avoiding "sex", is Sorderbergh trying to avoid romanticising Sasha's profession? By abstractly equating prostitution with "every other job" (very Marxist...but he directed "Che" shortly before), does he unintentionally romanticise prostitution anyway?
11. Though Sorderbergh omits the sex that Sasha has with her clients, he always includes an "after or before sex" scene in which they have a conversation. These conversations always consist of the client offering Sasha business advice or financial assistance. She alternates from a business savvy, "modern professional", to a profoundly pathetic, dead-eyed badminton shuttle, traded back and forth.
12. In one key scene, Sasha visits a website promoter whom she thinks will help publicise her. Unfortunately, this sleazy man will only assist if she performs a derogatory sex act. Because the film is so subdued and makes an effort to avoid sex, this particular "request" is genuinely shocking. It is at this moment that Sasha first seems to awaken from her "eyes wide shut" slumber. This "big revelation" moment doesn't quite work, however, as the film sets up Sasha as a single minded person who would in actuality readily do as requested. But isn't our expectation itself prejudice?
13. The film ends with a Jewish jeweller talking about the upcoming general elections, the late 2000 financial crisis, the Israeli/Palestine conflict and the price of gold. He takes his clothes off and then gives Sasha a warm hug. The films ends on this ambiguous image.
14. We get a sense throughout the film that Sasha's clients - all businessmen and well-off personalities - turn to her to escape the uncertainties of a fluctuating economy or perhaps the dissatisfactions of a fully functioning one. She's a comforting teddy bear, but in embracing her they're ironically clinging to the very thing they're running away from. The "hyper-sweetness" of Soderbergh's final scene (lonely man hugging a woman like a wounded child) is complex: prostitution as an act of extreme desperation, torture even, for both parties, whilst simultaneously being comforting, tender in comparison to the brutal logic of late capitalism.
7.9/10 - Nice companion piece to Antonioni's "Red Desert". See Assayas' "Demonlover", "Boarding Gate" and "Summer Hours". Worth one viewing.
1. Every scene here revolves around money, upgrading one's business or advertising/self-promotion. Every character is busy trying to "take it to the next level", desperate to "up their income", rake in more cash, conquer the competition and expand their client base.
2. Like "Eyes Wide Shut", this is a world in which everybody is a commodity, indiscriminately passed around and traded. Unlike Kubrick's film, however, everyone here is quite happy to network, pimp, share information and engage in mutual exploitation. But money is not neutral. Ever.
3. Conversations throughout the film feel more like boardroom meetings or job interviews and the film's central romance is essentially one big business negotiation.
4. The precursor here is Antonioni via Kubrick. Still, it's a very throw-away film. Soderbergh needs to put more effort into his "art house" pictures. His Blockbusters look lovely; this is rushed.
5. The film's central character is played by Sasha Grey, a pornographic actress. There is some self-reference in the casting: Grey is herself a fairly driven personality, relentlessly using the film/Hollywood/porn scene to promote her name. Still, the film questions the lines between ambition and degradation.
6. In the film, Sasha follows a new age religion based on "books" and "numbers". Like a stock market spreadsheet, this mathematical religion essentially assigns numerical values and "worth" to people and things. Sasha dumps her boyfriend and "upgardes" to a new man based purely on the "religious signs" generated by this religion. The big shock of the film is that the wholly irrational "number religion" - a kind of comic take on late capitalism and free-market fundamentalism - fails Sasha and allows her to leave a man who genuinely loved her. IE: it is genuine human relationships that are meaningful, rather than cold economic currency.
7. You'd think that a film called "The Girlfriend Experience", which centres on a high class hooker, would examine Sasha's clientèle and show how she copes with the multiple "personalities" and "fantasies" which she must generate and project for her various customers. But no. There is no sex in this film (the sex, the whoring, is implicitly the exchange of currency - the commodification of all bodies) and Sasha's interactions with her clients are kept to a minimum. When we do see Sasha with her customers, she adopts a blank, very uncluttered, very uninterested, tone. Rather than create fantasy personas for her clients, the implication is that she is a blank slate upon which her customers project their desires. Sasha need not do anything more than turn up to her appointments and exist as a screen for these projections to take place.
8. All Sasha's clients are implicitly aware that they're paying for a fraud. It's a consensual charade. The "faith-system" runs on shared make believe. When faith runs own...the system crashes.
9. The cliché in these situations is that the client falls romantically for the hooker/stripper/call girl, not realising that it's all an act, but in Sorderbergh's film the reverse occurs. It is Sasha who naively falls for the customer, believing that he genuinely cares for her and intends to leave his wife and family to live with her. In a society where fantasies rapidly proliferate, it is now some pastoral, domestic bliss, some realm of innocence "outside" the board-game, that Sasha longingly wish for.
10. By avoiding "sex", is Sorderbergh trying to avoid romanticising Sasha's profession? By abstractly equating prostitution with "every other job" (very Marxist...but he directed "Che" shortly before), does he unintentionally romanticise prostitution anyway?
11. Though Sorderbergh omits the sex that Sasha has with her clients, he always includes an "after or before sex" scene in which they have a conversation. These conversations always consist of the client offering Sasha business advice or financial assistance. She alternates from a business savvy, "modern professional", to a profoundly pathetic, dead-eyed badminton shuttle, traded back and forth.
12. In one key scene, Sasha visits a website promoter whom she thinks will help publicise her. Unfortunately, this sleazy man will only assist if she performs a derogatory sex act. Because the film is so subdued and makes an effort to avoid sex, this particular "request" is genuinely shocking. It is at this moment that Sasha first seems to awaken from her "eyes wide shut" slumber. This "big revelation" moment doesn't quite work, however, as the film sets up Sasha as a single minded person who would in actuality readily do as requested. But isn't our expectation itself prejudice?
13. The film ends with a Jewish jeweller talking about the upcoming general elections, the late 2000 financial crisis, the Israeli/Palestine conflict and the price of gold. He takes his clothes off and then gives Sasha a warm hug. The films ends on this ambiguous image.
14. We get a sense throughout the film that Sasha's clients - all businessmen and well-off personalities - turn to her to escape the uncertainties of a fluctuating economy or perhaps the dissatisfactions of a fully functioning one. She's a comforting teddy bear, but in embracing her they're ironically clinging to the very thing they're running away from. The "hyper-sweetness" of Soderbergh's final scene (lonely man hugging a woman like a wounded child) is complex: prostitution as an act of extreme desperation, torture even, for both parties, whilst simultaneously being comforting, tender in comparison to the brutal logic of late capitalism.
7.9/10 - Nice companion piece to Antonioni's "Red Desert". See Assayas' "Demonlover", "Boarding Gate" and "Summer Hours". Worth one viewing.