(…) Part of what is so compelling about this film is the realism. This didn’t always work for Steven Soderbergh in Che, but The Girlfriend Experience has more in common with his earlier films like Sex, Lies, and Videotape or Richard Linklater’s Before Sunset. Chelsea is restless; she wants more. She doesn’t even know what she wants. And one of the difficulties of sex work, as Sasha surely knows, is the decreasing return. As sex workers age they have to work harder and do more for less pay. Strippers, hookers, porn performers, often start at the top of their game. It’s downhill from there. And that’s the most depressing thing about sex work, that you’ll likely make less at thirty than you do at twenty. Careers aren’t supposed to work that way. Of course, bartending and waiting tables offer similar trajectories. And if it’s a choice between making a porn film and stocking clothes at a Wal-mart, porn offers significantly more upside. As Lorelei Lee points out, when her father expressed concern that she would do something she didn’t want to do for money, that’s what a job is.
But Chelsea has a delusion shared by so many sex workers. Or maybe it’s not a delusion, just a wish, often unfulfilled. There is this belief that a client is going to come along, that magical client who will take you onto something better, that will open a door for you, break the glass ceiling and let you into their club. And that is often the scam, the birth of disappointed hopes. I was a stripper for a year a long time ago, and I’ve done nude fetish modeling and I’ve been in adult films. I remember the men at the clubs I was stripping at in Chicago: The Lucky Horseshoe, Berlin, The Manhole. If you were a writer they were an agent; if you wanted to act they knew a director. They were so full of all the things they could do for you. I remember a man arriving at my show in a limo, his chauffeur waiting by the open door. He had big ideas for the things we would do together, but he didn’t tip enough for me to believe him.
And isn’t that like everything? Haven’t most of us been tricked by our own dreams? That’s not unique to sex work at all. If anything, it’s a parable for the entire publishing industry.
The drama, the narrative of the film as much as there is one, exists between Chelsea and Chris, her boyfriend, and the question is if their relationship can survive. But it’s not the sex work that strains their relationship as much as Chelsea’s ambition, her willingness to believe her clients promises and all the things her clients can do for her.
There are moments when audience members laugh at Chris and Chelsea, as if they can’t believe a sex worker could have a meaningful relationship; and other times as if they don’t believe a sex worker can love a client. And they definitely don’t believe a client can love a sex worker. They don’t believe that love can be strong and temporary. You can almost hear it under their breath, Not my husband. (…read more, therumpus.net)
