Girlfriend Experience Not Much of One

Adult-film star gives 'one-note performance'
By Matt Cantor,  Newser Staff
Posted May 22, 2009 1:45 PM CDT

The Girlfriend Experience, which showcases the life of a high-class prostitute offering clients more than just sex, looks good—but it’s a bit dry, critics say:

  • Steven Soderbergh’s movie is “an exquisitely filmed piece of urban impressionism that, unfortunately, leaves one feeling that a sleek gadget has been needlessly purchased,” writes Robert Abele in the Los Angeles Times. It’s “never quite pleasure, never quite pain and, therefore, never quite an experience.”

  • Claudia Puig notes in USA Today that the picture is “beautifully shot,” but “porn-star-turned-actress Sasha Grey” turns in a “one-note performance.”
  • Moira McDonald is on the same page: “She just seems perpetually bored, as was I. It's a brief 77 minutes of vague, pretty blankness,” she writes in the Seattle Times.
  • Roger Ebert disagrees in the Chicago Sun-Times: Grey’s acting “may not be ready for Steppenwolf but is right for this film,” one which “is true about human nature.”
(More Sasha Grey stories.)

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