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

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

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

To be honest, Sasha Grey is a face in search of an expression and the whole movie depends on her performance.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Oct 1, 2014

It doesn't say anything too deep, but it says it with crystalline style.

| Dec 11, 2009

Human feeling dares to outstare, for a mini-moment, the world of accounting, commodification, ecstasy-management.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 11, 2009

It's deliberately chilly, and feels like a series of overheard conversations rather than a story, obliging you to listen for barbs among the trivialities.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 4, 2009

Naturalistic performances and stylish, semi-documentary-style cinematography and editing (both courtesy of the director) make for an engrossing, insightful study of internal and interpersonal conflict.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 4, 2009

Staggeringly unsexy but strangely compelling.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 4, 2009

I don't think Soderbergh has ever missed quite as badly as this: a shallow, negligent piece of work, badly acted and casually put together.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Dec 4, 2009

Steven Soderbergh is very much in experimental mode with this chilly, downbeat Manhattan drama.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 4, 2009

Soderbergh proves he's still got the lightness of touch that marked him out as one to watch 20 years ago with Sex, Lies and Videotape.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 4, 2009

Director Steven Soderbergh is still as likely to serve up a stinker as a sweet-smelling success. The Girlfriend Experience? It gives off a fragrant pong.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 4, 2009

What Soderbergh's film wants to say is uncertain: That a prostitute has business problems like everyone else? That her johns seem a pretty sleazy lot? That "everyone is a critic"? None of these qualify as revelatory.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 4, 2009

The low-budget digital drama The Girlfriend Experience is one of [Soderbergh's] most successful experiments

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 3, 2009

Soderbergh likes to switch between large-scale films and minimalist dramas, with this very small, but most intriguing film.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 2, 2009

The Girlfriend Experience chronicling the day-to-day travails of a high-end sex worker and her personal trainer boyfriend is many different things, but sexy ain't one of them.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Aug 11, 2009

The movie ends so abruptly (it runs a scant 77 minutes), it's a toss-up as to whether Soderbergh was trying to make an auteur statement or simply lost his mojo.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 26, 2009

This is one of the director's small, experimental, semi-improvised provocations, and if it doesn't push too deep, it's pointed enough to leave a mark.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 25, 2009

There are layers upon layers here--a porn star taking on a serious acting role in which she plays a woman whose job is to make herself an object of male fantasy--but it's unclear whether Grey is aware of any of them.

| Jun 8, 2009