Girlfriend Experience - Blu-Ray

Film: Chelsea (Sasha Grey) works as an escort in New York City. She offers her well-heeled clients a very special service: the Girlfriend Experience, where she makes the client feel genuine intimacy and familiarity. It is as if she were the real girlfriend with whom you can go out to dinner or to the movies and theater and with whom you can experience passionate sex. Thanks to this very special service Chelsea earns up to 2000 dollars an hour - much more than her boyfriend Chris (Chris Santos), who makes his modest living as a fitness trainer. But the financial crisis doesn't stop at venal love, and for the first time Chelsea worries about her future. She's ready to break new ground, but this decision could have an extremely negative impact not only on her business, but also on her personal life...

Steven Soderbergh is known for liking to dabble in a variety of genres. In addition to more crowd-pleasing fare such as his successful Ocean`s Films, Traffic, and Erin Brockovic, he has also consistently flexed his creativity on smaller, more experimental productions. Girlfriend Experience is undoubtedly one of those experimental arthouse films that tends to appeal to a small niche audience, but at the same time is an excellent testament to Soderbergh`s versatility. The film doesn't tell a stringent story, but presents more of a collage of snapshots from a few days in the life of a luxury call girl.

The viewer watches her talk to clients, plan her new website, or even interview a journalist. Her boyfriend Chris is followed by the camera to work and to a trip to Las Vegas with a group of wealthy businessmen. At first glance, all of this seems a bit undercooked and superficial based on the visuals alone. But on closer inspection, the drama set shortly before the 2008 American presidential election turns out to be a sometimes quite biting commentary on society, politics and the media. The film may be a bit unwieldy and even exhausting in terms of its style. However, it cannot be accused of being insignificant in terms of content.

The performance of leading actress Sasha Grey, who has primarily made a name for herself as a porn actress, is also convincing. Now, one might think that she only got the role as a call girl because of her professional background. But since there is almost no sex or nudity in Girlfriend Experience, and the action is primarily driven by dialogue, Grey actually has to convince here with acting talent rather than her body. And she succeeds really well in terms of the slightly improvised production.

Girlfriend Experience is truly not a film for the masses. The lack of a classic plot and a clear narrative structure alone is likely to put many viewers off. But those who get involved in this little film experiment and who still manage to look beneath the surface will realize that Steven Soderbergh has here translated his talent as a versatile filmmaker into an apt critique of capitalism that is absolutely worth seeing from a purely artistic point of view.

Image + Sound: The Blu-ray's image is very clean and also pleases with very good overall sharpness, which is interrupted at a few moments by blurring used as a deliberate stylistic device. The color scheme underscores the film's undercooled atmosphere. The sound is largely very restrained and is dominated by a natural soundscape and centrally mixed dialogue. Perfectly adequate for a small arthouse film. Good!

Extras: As a bonus, there is also an alternative cut version of the film, which is missing, for example, the scenes in which the businessmen talk in their private jet. Instead, a little new or alternate footage has been included. Other scenes have also been slightly recut or repositioned. In terms of running time, this version, which is in English only, differs only marginally from the actual version.

In addition, the disc has a very interesting audio commentary by director Steven Soderbergh and lead actress Sasha Grey, which reveals itself to be a very insightful conversation, but unfortunately there are no optional German subtitles.

Finally, there is a short promotional making of and the trailer for the film. Good!

Conclusion: With Girlfriend Experience, Steven Soderbergh once again shows himself to be not a commercial filmmaker, but an experimental one. His collage-like narrated look at the everyday life of a luxury escort lady is not only a very intimate drama, but also biting criticism of capitalism. Admittedly, only a few viewers will be able to fully enjoy the somewhat unwieldy production. For fans of the filmmaker this home cinema premiere is nevertheless, not least also due to the good technical conversion, the interesting audio commentary and the additional cut: absolutely recommendable!

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp