slice of life
Slice of life is a depiction of mundane experiences in art and entertainment. In theater, slice of life refers to naturalism, while in literary parlance it is a narrative technique in which a seemingly arbitrary sequence of events in a characte ...
drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has b ...
pornographic actress
A pornographic film actor or actress, pornographic performer, adult entertainer, or porn star is a person who performs sex acts in video that is usually characterized as a pornographic movie. Such videos tend to be made in a number of dis ...
Sasha Grey
Marina Ann Hantzis (born March 14, 1988), known professionally as Sasha Grey, is an American actress, model, writer, musician, and former pornographic actress. Grey began her acting career in the pornographic film industry, winning 15 awards for ...
. It was shot in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
, and a
rough cut
In filmmaking, the rough cut is the second of three stages of offline editing. The term originates from the early days of filmmaking when film stock was physically cut and reassembled, but is still used to describe projects that are recorded and ...
was screened at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2009. The film was also made available on
Amazon Video on Demand
Amazon Prime Video, also known simply as Prime Video, is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming and rental service of Amazon offered as a standalone service or as part of Amazon's Prime subscription. The service pri ...
Cries and Whispers
''Cries and Whispers'' ( sv, Viskningar och rop, lit=Whispers and Cries) is a 1972 Swedish period drama film written and directed by Ingmar Bergman and starring Harriet Andersson, Kari Sylwan, Ingrid Thulin and Liv Ullmann. The film, set in ...
'' as influences. The film is also notable because it was produced for $1.3 million and was shot with a relatively inexpensive Red One camera.
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
escort meets the challenges of her boyfriend, her clients, and her work. Chelsea (real name Christine) specializes in offering
girlfriend experience
A girlfriend experience (GFE) is a commercial sex service that blurs the boundaries between a financial transaction and a romantic relationship. It ranges from a transactional sex relationship to a client paying a sex worker to pretend to be his ...
s. She finds that lately her clients are spending less and less on her services, and are troubled by the
financial crisis
A financial crisis is any of a broad variety of situations in which some financial assets suddenly lose a large part of their nominal value. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many financial crises were associated with banking panics, and man ...
, a topic they raise frequently in her company. She is also interviewed by a
journalist
A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalis ...
, who quizzes her about her work and personal life. She goes from client to client performing her services.
Cast
*
Sasha Grey
Marina Ann Hantzis (born March 14, 1988), known professionally as Sasha Grey, is an American actress, model, writer, musician, and former pornographic actress. Grey began her acting career in the pornographic film industry, winning 15 awards for ...
as Christine, alias Chelsea
* Chris Santos as Chris
*
Emma Lahana
Emma Kate Lahana (born ) is a New Zealand actress. She is known for her roles as Kira Ford, the Yellow Dino Ranger, in ''Power Rangers Dino Thunder'', Jennifer Mason on '' Haven'', and Brigid O'Reilly in '' Cloak & Dagger''.
Career
Lahana play ...
as Adrian
* Philip Eytan as Philip
* Timothy Davis as Tim
* Peter Zizzo as Zizzo
*
Glenn Kenny
Glenn Kenny (born August 8, 1959) is an American film critic and journalist. He writes for ''The New York Times'' and '' RogerEbert.com''.
Biography
Kenny attended William Paterson University, where he majored in English literature.
Reception
, the film has a 67% approval rating on the review aggregator site
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
based on 139 reviews with an average rating of 6.39/10. The website's critics consensus states: "Steven Soderbergh's latest lo-fi production is strikingly crafted but emotionally vague".
Roger Ebert rated the film four out of four stars, saying "This film is true about human nature. It clearly sees needs and desires. It is not universal, but within its particular focus, it is unrelenting."
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Kyle Smith of the ''
New York Post
The ''New York Post'' (''NY Post'') is a conservative daily tabloid newspaper published in New York City. The ''Post'' also operates NYPost.com, the celebrity gossip site PageSix.com, and the entertainment site Decider.com.
It was established ...
'' awarded the film 1 star out of 4, saying "Time for another of Steven Soderbergh's 'experimental,' i.e., half-assed, films."
David Edelstein
David Edelstein (born 1959) is a freelance American film critic who has been the principal film critic for ''Slate'' and ''New York'' magazine, among others, and has appeared regularly on NPR's ''Fresh Air'' and ''CBS Sunday Morning'' programs. O ...
of ''
New York Magazine
''New York'' is an American biweekly magazine concerned with life, culture, politics, and style generally, and with a particular emphasis on New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to ''The New Yorker' ...
'' complained that, "Most of the dialogue is listless, and no matter how much Soderbergh snips and stitches, the movie is a corpse with twitching limbs." Luke Davies, critic for ''
The Monthly
''The Monthly'' is an Australian national magazine of politics, society and the arts, which is published eleven times per year on a monthly basis except the December/January issue. Founded in 2005, it is published by Melbourne property developer ...
'', wrote that the film is "disposable and pretentious" and "is shot sombrely and austerely, in a style that might be described as 'vacuous chic'" and concluded that "as a film in which a porn star's presence is a fundamental marketing hook, it is masturbation."
Television series
In June 2014, Starz committed to a 13-episode order for a new television series, based on the film, with Soderbergh and Philip Fleishman as executive producers.
Lodge Kerrigan
Lodge Hunt Kerrigan (born March 23, 1964) is an American motion picture screenwriter and director. His 2010 film '' Rebecca H. (Return to the Dogs)'' entered into the Un Certain Regard section of the 2010 Cannes Film Festival.
Along with Amy S ...
and
Amy Seimetz
Amy Lynne Seimetz is an American actress and filmmaker. She has appeared in several productions, including AMC's '' The Killing'', HBO's ''Family Tree'', and films like '' Upstream Color'', '' Alien: Covenant'', ''Pet Sematary'', and ''No Sudde ...
co-wrote and directed all 13 episodes. Sasha Grey and her character were not included though the main character uses the same name(s).
Riley Keough
Danielle Riley Keough ( ; born May 29, 1989) is an American actress, notable for being the daughter of musicians Lisa Marie Presley and Danny Keough, and granddaughter of actress Priscilla Presley and singer Elvis Presley, and starting a succes ...
stars as the new lead, described by Soderbergh as "a new character on a new trajectory". Well-received lead actress from Season 1, Riley Keough, did not return in Season 2 of ''The Girlfriend Experience''. Instead the show featured two new stories focusing on two different sets of characters. Season 3 of The Girlfriend Experience was announced in July by Starz. The third season, featuring Julia Goldani Telles in the lead, premiered on May 2, 2021.