MovieChat Forums > The Girlfriend Experience (2009) Discussion > Steven Soderbergh gets away with a lot.

Steven Soderbergh gets away with a lot.

posted 13 years ago by oldboy284
3 replies | jump to latest

This is like "Annie Hall, Lost in Translation and Winter's Bone" combined. This film, like those films, made 90mins(77mins, I know) seem like it was twice as long. Seven minutes in, I start using the film as background noise while i'm searching the web. Nothing happens, I thought at least with Sasha Grey I get to see some decent sex scenes. I'll admit Sasha did a decent job with the character for what it was. I expect this character to be distant even a little devoid of actual emotion. On the other hand, this is probably just her being herself outside of an intense porn scene. I've seen interviews of her and really she's no different from how she acts in most of this film. Don't know her but maybe i'm wrong. The q-tip scene she did good.

Anyway the film is a complete waste of time. Roger Ebert should just retire. 4 stars, really? Critic seems to give him passes all the time. I read a review on this or one of his other super low-budget pretentious crapfest that both slammed the film and praise Soderbergh, seeming to imply that he does films so bad on purpose. The most ridiculous thing I ever heard. I've seen a number of his films and the only films I like are Erin Brockovich, Traffic and Ocean's 13. The rest are boring, pretentious or plain corny IMO. The critic await every film he puts and everyone else they'll slice to piece if the slightly misstep. They'll rip on a Fincher or Scorsese film before they'll truly rip on a Soderbergh film it seems.

[–] Strings101 13 years ago

Yeah, compared to some of his prior work, he kinda "phoned it in" here... or maybe he lost a bet, and was "obligated" to make this flick, lol.

I mean there was certainly some diligence put into musical choices, cinematography, locations, etc., but it still had that "senior project" neophyte feel... and the deliberately out-of-sequence format (MAJOR WRITER'S COP-OUT) didn't help.

PS: Why did most of the characters have their real names? Was that supposed to be "edgy" too?

[–] oldboy284 13 years ago

You make a good point, it did seem like he had a flashback to years before Sex, Lies and Videotape(videotape especially). Like something I did in film school.

[–] mclem-40-927148 13 years ago

I felt like Soderbergh really wanted to do a movie about politics and the economy, and used the Escort angle as a hook and draw. But the connection really wasn't a good one. The non-linear structure seemed like it was merely a way of stretching out a thin, uninteresting plot.