A drama set in the days leading up to the 2008 Presidential election, and centered on a high-end Manhattan call girl meeting the challenges of her boyfriend, her clients, and her work.A drama set in the days leading up to the 2008 Presidential election, and centered on a high-end Manhattan call girl meeting the challenges of her boyfriend, her clients, and her work.A drama set in the days leading up to the 2008 Presidential election, and centered on a high-end Manhattan call girl meeting the challenges of her boyfriend, her clients, and her work.
- Awards
- 2 nominations
- Waiter
- (as T. Colby Trane)
- Director
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- Trivia"Girlfriend experience" is a form of sex work (paid-for female companionship) in which a female prostitute behaves like a male client's girlfriend or shows (artificial) emotional intimacy beyond the sex act.
- Quotes
Chelsea: [voice-over] I met with Phillipe on October 5th and 6th. I wore a Michael Kors dress and shoes with La Perla lingerie underneath, and diamond stud earrings. We met at 7:30 PM at the hotel, and had a drink downstairs. He liked my dress but didn't go into detail why, and didn't mention anything else about my appearance. We ate dinner at Blue Hill. Phillipe didn't ask for a menu and had the chef serve us a five-course meal, a different wine with each course. We went to the 9:40 PM showing of 'Man on Wire' at the Sunshine Cinema, and he liked the movie. We went back to the hotel and talked for half an hour. Mostly about a friend of his that keeps borrowing money from him and not paying it back. Then we had sex for about an hour. After that, we talked for about 15 minutes and he fell asleep. At breakfast, he briefly told me his worries regarding the economy, and he said I should invest my money in gold. He also mentioned a book about how the Federal Reserve works. He didn't make another appointment.
- Crazy creditsAfter the end credits, there's a brief scene of Chelsea washing a client's hair as he sits in a bathtub and talks about John McCain.
- ConnectionsFeatured in 2010 AVN Awards Show (2010)
- SoundtracksBad Timing
Written and Produced by David Holmes
Courtesy of Universal Songs of Polygram International Inc.
The film which is a series of episodic vignettes about the encounters, both professional and personal, of a high-priced Manhattan escort girl set in the run-up to last year's US Presidential election is not really about prostitution either as a means of earning money or as a paradigm for the despair of the human soul.
What it is really about is speed-dating, not as an extra-curricular activity but as a well-rewarded existence. The film opens with Ms Grey leaving a hotel and getting into a car and giving a deadpan account of her previous encounter with a client. She prefaces her remarks by listing her complete outfit down to her underwear since this was obviously part of the client "package" which he has purchased, if only for a short time. This sets the tone of the film as being a triumph of, quite literally, style over substance.
This is a very sanitised world with no violence, no drug-taking and even no cooking although enormous importance is attached to meals, mainly taken in commercial premises, where many important conversations take place with Chelsea describing her situation either to clients, an alternately amused and bemused girlfriend (of the platonic variety), and to a journalist. In Chelsea's profession making intelligent, if superficial, conversation is as, if not more, important than her bedroom gymnastic skills.
Whilst Ms Grey's elegant Ice Maiden, a persona she has exploited with astonishing ability in her adult film roles, is eminently watchable the main weaknesses of the film are the character and the plot. Ms Grey and her personal trainer boyfriend are mismatched and seem to have nothing in common except vapid self-regard.
There is not so much a narrative thread as a series of threads that Soderbergh pulls out then almost immediately lets drop again. The scene with the boyfriend where Chelsea tells him she is thinking of going away for the weekend with a client put me briefly in mind of Paul Snider's jealous murderous rage towards Dorothy Stratten (who emerged from the softcore world of Playboy to be on the brink of a carer as a serious actress before her untimely demise) at the end of Bob Fosse's biopic of that tragic figure, "Star 80", but it is never developed and it never becomes clear whether they patched up their differences or parted company.
The most interesting scene and the one where Chelsea almost has a "Goodbar" moment is an encounter with a blog reviewer of erotic "services", the gelatinous self styled "Erotic Connoisseur" . This stands out in sharp contrast to the rest of the film as the dialogue is sharp and pointed and even witty, provoking laughter in the audience, as relief from the surrounding conversational banality. However part way through the scene fades and we do not learn the denouement until later when she describes it in a conversation with a client.
This is one example of how scenes crucial to the action are discussed rather than depicted. This may have some value in a documentary but it weakens a drama which should have both conflict and resolution and this has neither and instead is a few days in the life of a New York escort girl except Ms Grey isn't an escort girl in reality but portraying one in fiction.
Lastly, we come to Ms Grey herself, who I think will be the major selling point of this film particularly for those who have come across at least some of her other 180-odd films she has appeared in since the age of 18 which will never receive a cinema release. Soderbergh himself makes an ironic reference to this in the final scene where a mountainous Jewish jewellry store owner achieves release by merely being embraced by Ms Grey, clad only in bra and pants, just as many others have achieved release by being electronically embraced by Ms Grey through watching her films.
Ms Grey is the most intriguing figure to come out of the adult film industry and attempt a mainstream crossover since Traci Lords in the mid-1980s. Her svelte, dark-haired willowy appearance stands in sharp contrast to the blowsy, blonde, silicon-assisted features of previous adult film stars who have entered the wider public consciousness in more recent times such as Jenna Jameson.
Could Ms Grey achieve what Dorothy Stratten was on the brink of doing before tragedy intervened and become widely accepted as a mainstream actress? On this evidence she has a long way to go yet but this reviewer will continue to follow her career with interest.
Details
Box office
- Budget
- $1,700,000 (estimated)
- Gross US & Canada
- $695,840
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $162,965
- May 24, 2009
- Gross worldwide
- $1,060,941
- Runtime1 hour 17 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 2.39 : 1