So-so movie about a high-end call girl in Manhattan. It's one of Soderbergh's experimental films, which means it doesn't really have a plot; instead we get random scenes in which everything is a transaction. The call girl Chelsea, played by adult film star Sasha Gray, has one expression, a kind of bemused vacuousness. It's interesting for a while because it makes you wonder what her character is really like but after 77 minutes it just gets tiring. The stuff with her boyfriend, a personal trainer aspiring for a management position, does not help matters. Soderbergh filmed this with a relatively cheap hi-def camera in wide-angle shots and it looks amazing. I'm a huge fan of film stock over digital cameras but the look and feel he got with his camera was impressive. The compositions were the best part of the film.
You know I was sort-of, kind-of positive about this movie when I saw it. But, to be honest, the more I thought about it the more irritated me. I realize what Soderbergh was trying to capture, but its hard for me to work up sympathy for millionaires on private jets to Vegas complaining about what was happening in the economy. Thats just a slice of it, really. But I do think Sasha Grey was kind of good, although in the end it was just stunt-casting really, just because she had that sort of aloofness that I imagine an upscale escort who has to fulfill a variety of roles has to have. Comes with the business, I suppose.
ReplyDeleteThe men talking on the plane was unbearable. Sasha Gray's aloofness was definitely interesting but only to a point I think. After a while I began to think the aloofness was really just inability to act.
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