Sundance review: The Girlfriend Experience

by Violet Blue on January 21, 2009


Image of Sasha Grey (left) from this gallery that demonstrates some of her other on-camera work.

My dear friend (and possible, soon-to-be-nemesis in an upcoming Cinematical podcast where we square off about the work of Rob Zombie) James Rocchi just saw Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience at Sundance — starring Sasha Grey. James did send me a text from Sundance before seeing the film… Here’s a snip from his “Girlfriend Experience”:

(…) The first murmuring I heard to make that “Sneak Preview” a must-see was that the presentation was going to be an evening with Steven Soderbergh, a night of clips and conversation — until that proposition, exciting as it was, was supplanted by another rumor: That the Eccles Sneak was going to be Soderbergh showing The Girlfriend Experience, his new run-and-gun, shot-with-the-4K-Red-digital-camera, adult-actress-in-the-lead-role, largely-improvised drama about the life of a New York escort. The rumors, for once, were true.

Soderbergh introduced the film with, as he put it, “a few caveats” as a “work in progress” projecting a 1080p reduction of the 4K file. In 1989, Soderbergh gave Sundance, and then us, sex, lies and videotape; in 2009, he offers sex, truth, and digital video. Much fuss was made when Soderbergh announced this film, and even more was made when he cast adult actress (the polite euphemism for ‘porn star,’ and that itself a polite euphemism for ‘someone who has sex on-camera for money’) Sasha Grey in the lead role as a Manhattan call girl who offers not just rushed release but the more refined “girlfriend experience” — a suite of services including, as we see in the opener, fine red wine and Marc Jacobs black dresses, soft kisses and small talk, and many more things, an experience that goes far beyond sex. And yet still includes it. (…read more, cinematical.com)

Violet Blue

The London Times named Violet Blue "One of the 40 bloggers who really count" and Self Magazine named TinyNibbles one of the “Best Sex Resources for Women.” Blue is an autodidact and pundit on sex and technology, hacking and security, porn for women, privacy and bleeding-edge tech culture. She is a journalist for ZDNet, CBS News, CNET; she's an educator, speaker, crisis counselor, volunteer NGO trainer, and the author and editor of over 40 award-winning books.

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{ 1 comment }

1 Ryan January 22, 2009 at 10:48 am

hmmmm. Your image of Sasha Grey isn’t showing.

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