Chelsea (Sasha Grey) is a Manhattan call girl with a unique specialty: she provides a full girlfriend experience to her clients. This means, at the cost of $2000/hour, she will show up in a little black dress, eat at Blue Hill, listen to rants about the stock market, have sex, and read the Times over a fruit plate in the morning. Even with the constant specter of the failing economy, Chelsea’s business appears to be recession-proof. But despite the luxe life she already leads—town cars, shopping sprees at Costume National, a floor-through apartment—she craves an even greater degree of success and is shown in the film’s nonlinear narrative meeting with consultants on how to expand and improve her business. Her live-in boyfriend Chris (Chris Santos) is a personal trainer who appears to have little trouble with her lifestyle; he also shares her ambition. The only problem is that his on-the-books job gives him lots of face time training financiers but little of the financial pay off his girlfriend enjoys.

Director Steven Soderbergh gives a nuanced portrait of the sex industry, showing the seediness, the mundane aspects, and the real emotional connections that are all part of Chelsea’s life. Set last fall, the film works equally well as a capsule of America in October 2008, when all anyone discussed, from hedge fund managers to Hasidic jewelers, was the economy and the election.

The casting of real-life adult film star Sasha Grey as Chelsea is easily dismissible as a stunt, but Grey proves herself to be a capable
actress. Chelsea has, as one disgruntled client puts it in the film, a flat affect, and Grey shows enough hints of an inner life that the  audience is kept mesmerized, wondering how much of the real Chelsea—and Grey—they will be allowed to experience.
 

The Girlfriend Experience premieres on Tuesday, April 28, at 9:00 pm, with two more screenings to follow. A panel with Soderbergh and Grey will follow the screening on Wednesday, April 29, at 8:00 pm.

Rush Tickets are available for remaining screenings, and keep checking back in case additional tickets are released.

Fun fact: in an interview to come on the site, Grey cited director Catherine Breillat as the "woman whose career she'd want to have."