The Girlfriend Experience
Sasha Gray plays the role of Chelsea who is a prostitute in the movie The Girlfriend Experience. Gray in actual life is a porn star and fits the role quite perfectly. And she seems to be the choice of Steven Soderbergh the director not for the image attached to her but surely for her acting skills, which is quite commendable.
As the role suggests Chelsea’s profession and the story revolves around her job and the customers she encounters. The money factor is quite straightforward and obviously she charges exuberantly for the services provided to her clients who are equally rich, in fact, they are mostly the stock market traders. The 2008 stock market crash and the political campaign serve as the background of the film though.
The film deals with the human traits, aspirations and wants though these factors are not the central theme of the film, yet they are displayed quite persistently. It is more about the story of Chelsea and her business; the customer she gets to meet daily who are from different walks of life but surely all are rich and Chelsea is not cheap either.
And, among all the men in her life, she is living with one of the guys for sometime who is no better than any of her clients. Basically, her services include giving a date experience to her customer to simply say behaves like a girlfriend. Of course the sexual favours maybe a part of the package. Basically, her services pertain to pretend being the girlfriend of the customer; have long talks and share some personal moments exactly like a girlfriend and all this for being paid!
The services offered by Chelsea gave solace to her client that was beyond any sexual encounter and gave them brief moments of companionship, which they seldom found in their actual lives and it soothes them in few ways. Chelsea is often involved in conversations that are otherwise not her topics, for instance her clients would give suggestions of where to invest and whom vote kind of information. Basically they want her to invest the earnings in the right place and they have an attitude of being on date. This not to say they will abandon their families for this one night stand or the so called “girlfriend”, they share all their family information with her and most of the times Chelsea recalls the names of her client’s wives and children!
Chelsea’s main professional duty is to inflate the ego of her clients; give them the feeling that they are the best and also pretend as if they possess all the virtues of the young and a perfect man.
Brian Koppelman and David Levien have written the movie who also shares the credit of writing Ocean’s Thirteen. Gray is not portrayed an extraordinary performance but she stirs good amount of interest in the audience with her unscrupulous approach towards her profession. She is totally professional by the word, seldom displays her emotions, she simply means business, which is very similar to the characteristics of the market traders who are only concerned about projecting their customers to be the best and necessarily not about money-making.
Gray comfortably balances her optimism and sadness not going overboard in either of the situations. The film is rated R for explicit content on sex, some nudity and language.
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Film: The Girlfriend Experience
Cast: Sasha Grey as Chelsea, Chris Santos as Chris, Peter Zizzo as Wealthy Client, Glenn Kenny as Erotic Connoisseur
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Writer: Brian Koppelman, David Levien
Run time: 1 hour and 17 minutes
Rating: 3.5/5
Posted on Monday, May 25th, 2009 at 4:24 pm