The Girlfriend Experience

The Independent“Another of Steven Soderbergh's experimental pictures...” 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...

Little White Lies“raises more questions than it answers...” Soderbergh’s cleverly time-shifting narrative shows us consequence before action, which ramps up the intrigue as the fragility of Chelsea’s existence is exposed by a savagely comic encounter with a seasoned pervert...

Guardian“Not much of an experience, this...” 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...

Total Film “Fiscal angst drives every scene...” Taking place over the five days before Obama’s election with the US economy in freefall, Experience is a snapshot-critique of a world where everyone and everything in life can be bought and sold...

The Times“It’s staggeringly unsexy but strangely compelling...” What’s fascinating is that the film gives us a glimpse of the recent financial meltdown through the eyes of a luxury commodity. Chelsea listens while her banker clients whimper about their shrivelling investment portfolios...

The Telegraph“Steven Soderbergh is very much in experimental mode...” Soderbergh has clearly cast Grey for what someone else calls her “flat affect, lack of culture, and refusal to engage”. She’s a self-styled commodity, her stock at risk with the economy in free-fall...

Channel4 Film“they have successfully breathed life into this high-price prostitute...” The Girlfriend Experience is no date movie: Soderbergh offers a snappily paced but tonally bleak snapshot of an alienated young woman who has ridden the new culture of personal branding to its psychological and physical limits...

Time Out film“An impressionistic portrait of a lifestyle dilemma...” An engrossing, insightful study of internal and interpersonal conflict; while an affecting coda merely confirms the understated, non-judgmental tenderness underpinning the entire movie...

Empire“Good central performances but short on plot...” 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...

Variety“fascinating study of free enterprise in free fall...” Like Godard, Soderbergh views prostitution as the ultimate paradigm for capitalism. But where Godard saw the hooker as a tragic or exploited victim Soderbergh suggests there are no victims in the post-Reagan era of DIY capitalism...