The Flat-Affect Experience

On Saturday night I saw The Girlfriend Experience, Steven "Sex, Lies & Videotape" Soderbergh's latest. It is currently playing in only three movie houses in Manhattan; fortunately, it's also on HBO On Demand. Unfortunately, that is the most positive thing I can say about this film--my friend and I did not have to shell out $12 apiece to see it. The other bright spot: my friend Kenny Blunt (who is partly responsible for the Chemistry parties that I've blogged about here) has a small role in this movie in which he plays, well, himself, except the real-life Kenny would never hire an escort to be his "girlfriend"--especially one as low-affect and boring as the one portrayed by Sasha Grey. Kenny manages more animation and rapport with the camera in his two minutes of onscreen time than the star of the movie. Sasha Grey may be the hottest thing since sunburn right now, but I cannot for the life of me understand why. Traci Lords made a far more convincing, if controversial and cartoonish, transition from porno to mainstream.

On paper, the character of Chelsea must have had far more life: a smart, sexy young woman in New York City who is like a less vulnerable, more successful, post-feminist version of Holly Golightly as portrayed by Audrey Hepburn. (This connection is made explicit through the artfully disheveled up-do hairdo, oversize shades, and chic little designer outfits on Sasha Grey's size 2 frame.) We understand that Chelsea is supposed to be one smart cookie because she has apparently cornered the market on being not just a Web-savvy, high-class escort to moneyed men who either live in New York or travel through on business, but being these Johns' girlfriend, and she is also writing a memoir. Yet Chelsea has nothing remotely girlfriendish to offer--she merely looks on with a glazed (perhaps medicated?) expression as her clients bemoan the state of the economy, offer contradictory financial advice, and talk politics (this movie was filmed last fall, during a most crucial presidential election). She offers no stories of her own (with one exception, which I shall dissect shortly), and although she does engage in kissing, she does not act affectionate, playful, or nurturing (sorry, but the final scene in the movie, in which Chelsea accepts and sort of returns a hug in the backroom of a portly, aging, McCain-supporting Orthodox Jew's jewelry store is just plain creepy--she is a shiksa statue wearing a thong instead of a fig leaf). Since the movie lacks sex scenes, there is no evidence that she makes up for these deficiencies by being a real firecracker between the sheets. But if the way she talks (and writes in her memoirs) is any indication, her sex life is as listless and colorless as her clothed interactions with clients...as well as with her real, nonpaying boyfriend.

That's right: Chelsea, unlike Holly Golightly, has a live-in boyfriend whose name I've already forgotten. He is a personal trainer who has the balls to ask, despite the tanking economy, for a bigger piece of the pie at the gym where he works, and is ostensibly cool with his girlfriend's job. In fact, he even gives her a very coachlike pep talk when she mumbles that she's sort of bummed out that there seems to be another girlfriendish escort on the scene, whom she spots one of her clients smooching while shopping for more designer outfits. But when she announces in another scene that she is taking off for the weekend with a new client whom she had apparently just screened that day, he reminds her of their "rules" (apparently weekend getaways with clients are a no-no even though she frequently does overnights with them in hotel suites). Chelsea repeats with about as much animation as a sedated tree sloth that she is going to do it anyway because she senses a real "connection" with this client, and tells Boyfriend that he might as well accept the invitation to fly to Las Vegas that weekend on some all-expenses-paid, all-boys jaunt cooked up by one of his rich gym-bunny clients. Boyfriend goes ballistic and tells Chelsea that she's ruining their year-and-a-half-long relationship, and there won't be anything for her to come back to after her weekend with Mr. Paying Connection. Except that because this film jumps around in time, you already know during this ultimatum that they don't break up. Boyfriend rants about Chelsea's breach of contract to his sympathetic friends who basically say "good riddance," yet earlier in the movie, we also see Boyfriend regaling Chelsea over an expensive restaurant dinner with a story of how the bar bill for one evening in Las Vegas came to $10,000. And she reacts in pretty much the same way as she does with anyone who tells her anything: Wow. Whatever. (With all those expensive, five-course meals in restaurants and hotel suites, you'd expect Chelsea to be packing a few extra pounds, but perhaps she is bulimic, or else burns tons of calories from having all that sex that we never view.)

This time-warp style of editing worked with Godard's New Wave films and Pulp Fiction, but sequencing events in a jumbled manner does not help The Girlfriend Experience because there is no character development. Any dramatic tension that might have occurred with a linear storyline has been forfeited, and Chelsea is a one-way mirror. Even close-ups of her impeccably made-up face have the aspect of long shots. And even the drama of her being stood up by Mr. Paying Connection, whose conscience over betraying his wife and kids kicks in after she's arrived at their love nest somewhere in the Hudson valley, which makes her seem almost human for a minute (ooh, she's experiencing rejection--still, she has the client's private car to whisk her back to her huge, temporarily boyfriendless apartment in Manhattan, where she finds a package containing artwork she'd admired in a gallery that Boyfriend apparently purchased), pales next to the real indignity she suffers. Some pompous, aging big shot, who promises to write a rave review of Chelsea on his heavily trafficked erotic website if she gives him a taste of her wares, instead skewers her personality and sexual prowess. Even though the screenwriters probably did not intend it this way, I find it quite disturbing that the movie's voice of truth comes from such a repulsive character, who correctly claims this hollow-eyed escort has zero affect and zero curves--and apparently, she's also bad in bed. The scathing review she receives at the hands of Mr. Big Shot upsets Chelsea so much she spills it to a sympathetic John. But even before she gets officially cyber-slammed, over a chichi lunch she confides to a fellow escort (who is also sympathetic, and far more engaging a personality than Sasha Grey) that Mr. Big Shot practices deplorable hygiene. What a non-surprise that Chelsea declines to divulge a more graphic description of the icky event. Obviously Chelsea, a narcissist of the non-charismatic variety, is susceptible to criticism of her saleable qualities, and understandably a client who does not shower regularly, even if he has promised her the moon, would make her queasy. Yet she is such a vacuous void with everyone she comes into contact with that it is impossible to feel for her or root for her; we are given no explanation of where she comes from, what motivates her, why she has chosen this path.

Throughout the movie we watch snippets of a journalist interviewing Chelsea (he also wants to interview her boyfriend simply because he tolerates her career) at an upscale restaurant, during which the journalist does most of the talking and, presumably, eating. Yet by the end of the interview, the journalist is convinced that Chelsea is holding out on him due to her impenetrable armor. On paper, Chelsea may well be self-protective and cagey; onscreen, however, she is an empty vessel. If this is the ideal New York girlfriend, a blank slate who barely weighs one hundred pounds, it is no wonder that I am still single--but then again, even though Chelsea also happens to be the name of a Manhattan neighborhood known for its thriving art scene as well as a legendary hotel, this must be one of the least "New York" movies filmed in this city that I have ever seen. Or perhaps it is a posh, insular, hermetically sealed version of New York that I've never experienced, which (if you'll kindly excuse a mixed-geography metaphor) seems to be going the way of Gone With the Wind.

The Girlfriend Experience could have been a strong, deeply felt film about love, sex, betrayal, and the bursting bubble (and possible death knell of modern-day U.S. capitalism), but there is no passion, no conviction--only a "whatever" attitude embodied in a pint-size, overpaid, possibly medicated escort. Without reaching any climax, this movie manages the dubious feat of achieving seventy-eight minutes' worth of literal petite morte.