The Girlfriend Experience

This is a film about a woman groping hopelessly toward complete self hood in an unforgiving context. She's unable to distinguish artificial playacting from reality, and since this playacting is her livelihood she is easily read as a critique of market capitalism.

Such a reading is effortlessly confirmed by the other characters' obsession with discussing how the financial crisis in autumn 2008 affects their lives. Is this critique helpful or, at the very least, exciting?

Probably not. But the film is still remarkable. In real life, Sasha Grey is an audacious porn star, so being cast as an escort who sells intimacy is something of the inverse of her typical gigs. This is interesting to keep in mind, especially since the film isn't pornographic--it's melancholic, even contemplative, mostly thanks to Sasha Grey's surprisingly capable acting.

So does anyone really benefit when the tools of old Manhatto feel the need to buy friendship? Neither they nor the people who sell it to them seem very fulfilled by the transaction. A cynic might complain that consumer culture has deteriorated to an unsalvageable mess of desire, fantasy, disappointment and despair.

I'm not sure about this--there's an odd sense of hope in Sasha Grey's blank face and childish mien.

The Girlfriend Experience