Girlfriend Experience Not Much of One

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.)