The Girlfriend Experience

R

Released May 22, 2009

1 hr. 17 min.

Drama

List

67%

140 Reviews

Tomatometer

35%

25,000+ Ratings

Audience Score

Chelsea (Sasha Grey) is an in-demand call girl whose $2,000 an hour price tag allows her to live in New York's lap of luxury. Besides her beauty and sexual skill, Chelsea offers her clients companionship and conversation, or, as she dubs it, "the girlfriend experience." With her successful business and a devoted, live-in boyfriend, Chelsea thinks she has it made... until a new client rocks her world.

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Critics Consensus

Steven Soderbergh's latest lo-fi production is strikingly crafted but emotionally vague.

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david f

It tries a little too hard to have a message but it is of-the-moment, contemporary, thoughtful and experimental.

Rated 2 out of 5 stars

03/31/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Slow, boring, uninteresting. Should be called a day in the life. Who cares

Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars

01/24/23

Full Review

waleed a

completely pointless and useless. garbo-trash. horrendous. why wouldn't they use an actress???? why was the acting in this movie less than straight-to-dvd level quality. worse than network drama acting. why did you need a porn star? especially since most actresses would have done everything required for this role, while also bringing talent. it was a little nudity. i don't think there was even a sex scene. so why in the hell would they not cast the hundreds of actresses that would have loved to start in a soderbergh movie. my theory is soderbergh was obsessed with sasha grey and wanted to do her. and her boyfriend was horrendous. even when he wasn't saying anything he was bad. also, critics are worst (1 viewing)

Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars

03/31/23

Full Review

Audience Member

This lacks the depth and substance of the TV show of the same name (aired 2016) produced by Soderbergh. I suppose one could say this is a good start, but it's too vaguely built and the film reads more like a jumbled essay with no thesis or plot development.

Rated 3 out of 5 stars

02/12/23

Full Review

Audience Member

This was good. Real good. And, damn, Sasha is so fiiiine!

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

02/17/23

Full Review

Marcus E

I just watched this in May 2017. I watched the Showtime series before this and loved it. I expected the same with this but it didn't deliver. I kept waiting for some action to occur... Talk about a sleeper. Oh and the week azz boyfriend was despicable. I almost turned it off because of him. What a punk. Anyway, this movie was a big letdown. 1 star for Sasha being cute.

Rated 1 out of 5 stars

05/01/17

Full Review

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Steven Soderbergh

Director

Sasha Grey

Chelsea

Chris Santos

Chris

Mark Jacobson

Interviewer

Glenn Kenny

Erotic Connoisseur

Philip Eytan

Philip

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Melissa Anderson

Film Comment Magazine

Documenting the way we speak now, however, doesn't compensate for the film's own hollow rhetoric; TGE's tricked-out, fractured narrative merely distracts from its dead-end cynicism.

Mar 28, 2018

Full Review

Christy Lemire

Associated Press

We also find ourselves wondering about the real Chelsea, but Grey plays her as such a chic, chameleonlike enigma, she remains beyond our grasp. It's all part of the game: enticing but frustrating, the ultimate tease.

Oct 1, 2014

Full Review

Mark Jenkins

NPR

The Girlfriend Experience proves that a visually striking film can be made on the fly. But grab-and-run is a more fruitful strategy for images than scripts.

Oct 1, 2014

Full Review

Jas Keimig

The Stranger (Seattle, WA)

In her first mainstream picture, adult film star Sasha Grey is appropriately enigmatic and alluring, if not a little stiff.

Dec 8, 2021

Full Review

David Walsh

World Socialist Web Site

Bringing bits and pieces of this unpleasant, narcissistic universe to life in The Girlfriend Experience, for example, is not a satisfying substitute for explaining why such a social existence came into being and why it fell apart.

Feb 13, 2021

Full Review

Mattie Lucas

From the Front Row

An intriguing if strangely empty glimpse inside a seemingly glamorous world,

Rated: 2.5/4

Aug 5, 2019

Full Review

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Synopsis

Chelsea (Sasha Grey) is an in-demand call girl whose $2,000 an hour price tag allows her to live in New York's lap of luxury. Besides her beauty and sexual skill, Chelsea offers her clients companionship and conversation, or, as she dubs it, "the girlfriend experience." With her successful business and a devoted, live-in boyfriend, Chelsea thinks she has it made... until a new client rocks her world.

Director: Steven Soderbergh
Executive Producer: Todd Wagner
Screenwriter: David Levien, Brian Koppelman
Distributor: Magnolia Pictures
Production Co: 2929 Entertainment, Extension 765
Rating: R (Nudity|Language|Sexual Content)
Genre: Drama
Original Language: English
Release Date (Theaters): May 22, 2009, Limited
Release Date (DVD): Jun 16, 2009
Box Office (Gross USA): $695.4K