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The Girlfriend Experience

Stylish, inventive, and cool

The Girlfriend Experience

Stylish, inventive and cool, Steven Soderbergh's "The Girlfriend Experience" is a Godardian inquiry into the ways in which sex and money function as transactional media at a time of diminishing economic prospects.

Shot on the ultra-cheap with mostly non-pro actors, it has a convincing air of intimacy. But the affectless lead actress and a manipulative script undermine some of the fine, fascinating work Soderbergh conjures.

Porn star Sasha Gray plays Christine, a high-priced call girl with a live-in boyfriend (Chris Santos) and aspirations to make something really big of herself. She seems to be moving according to plan when the economy tanks in the fall of '08.

That systemic shock, a quarrel with her sweetie, encounters with a journalist, a nasty erotic Web site commentator and a new, empathetic client combine to make her change her plans -- but her new scheme isn't entirely sound.

For this type of material, Gray isn't much of an actress -- her dim affect is cool, yes, but also excessively thin. And despite the improvised, fly-on-the-wall quality of the film, several deliberate screenplay choices give the story something of a moralistic quality. Soderbergh's experiments are gripping -- the photography, music, wobbly chronology and so on -- but the movie is more of a curiosity than anything else.

— S. Levy, The Oregonian

The Girlfriend Experience

Fri September 11, 2009, 7:00 & 9:00, Muenzinger Auditorium

USA, 2009, English, Color, 78 min, Rated R, Widescreen, 2.35:1, 35mm

recommend

Tickets

10 films for $60 with punch card
$9 general admission. $7 w/UCB student ID, $7 for senior citizens
$1 discount to anyone with a bike helmet
Free on your birthday! CU Cinema Studies students get in free.

Parking

Pay lot 360 (now only $1/hour!), across from the buffalo statue and next to the Duane Physics tower, is closest to Muenzinger. Free parking can be found after 5pm at the meters along Colorado Ave east of Folsom stadium and along University Ave west of Macky.

RTD Bus

Park elsewhere and catch the HOP to campus

International Film Series

(Originally called The University Film Commission)
Established 1941 by James Sandoe.

First Person Cinema

(Originally called The Experimental Cinema Group)
Established 1955 by Carla Selby, Gladney Oakley, Bruce Conner and Stan Brakhage.

C.U. Film Program

(AKA The Rocky Mountain Film Center)
First offered degrees in filmmaking and critical studies in 1989 under the guidance of Virgil Grillo.

Celebrating Stan

Created by Suranjan Ganguly in 2003.

C.U. Department of Cinema Studies & Moving Image Arts

Established 2017 by Chair Ernesto Acevedo-Muñoz.

Thank you, sponsors!
Boulder International Film Festival
Department of Cinema Studies & Moving Image Arts

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