First Hit: A well done, interesting and curious film which stayed with me for days.
Sasha Grey plays Chelsea, a high priced escort whose profession is to give her clients a “Girlfriend Experience”. She will have dinner, listen to whatever subject her client wants to talk about, feign real and casual interest, and will also sleep with them if that is what the client wants.
Building up a clientèle of people who have money and will regularly see her creates a connectedness between her and her clients. She learns something about each of them and asking the right questions at the right time, creates a space for the client to relax, and then leaves requiring nothing more than payment of $2,000 a night. Chelsea’s live in boyfriend Chris (played by Chris Santos) is also in the relationship building business. He is a personal trainer and works independently in health clubs to help clients become fit. It is obvious from the film’s start, that both of them believe that their looks and what’s on the outside is of ultimate importance.
Chelsea keeps a log of her clients and her dates with them and each entry begins with what she wore and how she looked wearing it. Their conversations when they are together in their upscale apartment are muted and superficial. Even when there is an argument, there is little discussion around what is really going on for them although Chris does make one attempt. It is clear that neither one of them has many (if any) friends nor is their relationship anything other than superficial at best.
During the film Chelsea has a meeting with a man who is either a client that just wants to talk or is someone interviewing her for research; it wasn’t clear to me, however his probing questions are deflected and elicit very little about how she got to this point in her life. She doesn’t want to be known and she painstakingly hides who she is from her boyfriend, clients and herself.
The one crack in her armor is when she becomes interested in a client on a personal level and after making a forbidden weekend date, he blows her off. In this scene she, for the first time, seems truly affected.
However, the last scene she is back at work doing what she does best, providing the appropriate level of service to a long term client.
Grey is wonderful as a emotionally distant high class escort. I’m sure that her real life experience as a porn film star added to the realness of being distant and separated from life, but performing well in life instead. Santos has the look and feel of a personal trainer and also appropriately distant. Steven Soderbergh directed this film smoothly and effortlessly. Shifting time, letting scenes play out, and creating the right look and feel making the film seem both dramatic fiction and also documentary in its revelations.
Overall: I kept moving into and out of the film as it played out. I studied the film and at times, but also got caught up into the film. It was, in hindsight, a very interesting and thought provoking experience.