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Viewer Score

47
Viewer score based on 20 votes.

Critic Score

66
Critics' score based on 26 reviews.
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Your Reviews

I ************ “The Girlfriend Experience”, my first venture into “pay for view” on TV. What an interesting film. So permeated with the... st of modern life. Recent history with its references to the recent election and the financial melt down. You know both are taking place somewhere off screen but you, the viewer are caught up in the lives of Christine and her boyfriend, both for hire to decorate the lives of the wealthy needy. Christine has a hard little face that she can soften with her youth, at will. Close ups reveal more that is distasteful, a square jaw, a deep crease in one corner of her mouth, a scar on her nose. Your mind jumps ahead. Where is this life going? What will she look like in five years, ten? Both characters are trying to maximize their earning power. “Work for the night is coming.” To wheel and deal, they have to step out of the chameleon mode and reveal themselves, which is distasteful to the people who are casting them in the image that serves their needs. The whole mood changes as you accompany them on these forays into the domain of another level of exploitation. There is the Gym owner who wants the boyfriend, personal trainer, to give up his individuality and wear the packaging of the Gym. There is the Pimp who wants to take Christine to Dubai. These folks are the real scary ones. You can tell they have seen Christine and her Boyfriend before and used them well before tossing them aside. There is a wealth of thought and comment in this film. Are we really this far of track in modern life? Is this what we have exchanged for the life of a Farmer? Factory worker? Do we live this much in the mom Full Review

June 11,2009
heysessa

If this had been called a documentary, I might have enjoyed it, but as a motion picture, it was a bust. (Not meant as a pun). It was a real... r and most people around me were watching with their eyes closed. I give this a "no star rating" Full Review

June 10,2009
Garroann

Technically beautiful, this movie is full of beautiful but souless people for whom advancing their own agenda seems to be the only point. The time... ame is the very recent past, with economic collapse looming; all of the characters seem to be scurrying to gain a foothold. I could have easily sympathized with this if any of them had been less than despicable. The action (or non-action) was agonizing slow. I hadn't expected a movie about sex and money to be so boring. I get the message. I just didn't find it entertaining on any level. I kind of wish we'd gone to see "Drag me to Hell", like my friend wanted to. Full Review

May 31,2009
Kadogear

The Girlfriend Experience sounds like it could be interesting but isn't. The storyline never goes anywhere and the acting is poor by most of the... rs in the movie. Also the ending is bad, nothi happened. This movie never makes up its mind about weather it wants to be a scripted documentary or a movie. Don't waste your time on this Full Review

May 30,2009
EngelhardtEMT

The movie is boring, slow, and based on a sickening subject

May 24,2009
aynnormand
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Critic Reviews

This film is true about human nature. It is not universal, but within its particular focus, it is unrelenting.Full Review

Roger Ebert
Chicago Sun-Times

The smartest thing director Steven Soderbergh did in the making of The Girlfriend Experience was to cast Sasha Grey.Full Review

Mick LaSalle
San Francisco Chronicle

The Girlfriend Experience is one of Steven Soderbergh's bite-size, semi-improvised, shot-on-DV doodles (like Bubble or Full Frontal), and it's the best one he's made.Full Review

Owen Gleiberman
Entertainment Weekly

Fair warning: I had to see The Girlfriend Experience twice before its pieces settled into coherent shape.Full Review

Ty Burr
Boston Globe

The thinking behind Grey's casting, with its obvious sex-industry connections, lends the film a degree of verisimilitude, but it really pays off in a cameo by film critic Glenn Kenny, who brings a hilariously sleazy theatricality to the role of an "escort critic" who expects graft for his reviews.Full Review

Scott Tobias
The Onion (A.V. Club)
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