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I wasn’t sure what to expect from this flick but since I have a weak spot for Steven Soderbergh’s work, I was really eager to check it out. Soderbergh is a very profilic director, very often releasing 2 movies in the same year but I’m not sure if it is a really a good thing since the quality of these multiple productions are rather disputable. Anyway, from time to time, he manages to make some more experimental features like ‘Bubble’ or ‘Full Frontal’. ‘Full Frontal’ was a disjointed mess, a terrible bore fest but ‘Bubble’ was pretty good, even if it didn’t blow me away like good old Roger Ebert. This feature was another experiment basically ending between those two, quality wise. First of all, the first surprising thing is that even though the main character was played by a notorious porn star and even though she was playing a high-end escort, there was actually no sex scene whatsoever. I’m pretty sure that many guys watched this flick hoping they will see some piece of action. Well, they must have been pretty disappointed. Personally, I didn’t bother me at all, in the contrary. This way, the whole thing was not exploitative whatsoever. Basically, it was more about the interactions between this escort girl and her clients and I thought it was really intriguing. Furthermore, I thought that Sasha Grey was actually pretty good. I mean, I read here and there that she was emotionless showing a terrible lack of acting talent but I don’t agree. In my opinion, the lack of emotion was perfect for the character and I thought there was something actually quite captivating about Grey’s presence and charisma. I would like to see her in another mainstream feature which has nothing to do with the sex industry, just to see if she could pull it off. Still, to be honest, the whole thing didn’t work very well, unfortunately. First of all, was it me or did half of the movie take place in restaurants and bars?! I wonder if it was done in purpose but it seemed rather redundant at some point. Another thing that bothered me even more was the random chronology. Basically, I spent the whole movie trying to fit the different pieces together which was a frustrating waste of time. Seriously, it is a gimmick which annoys more every time I see it because, most of the time, it doesn’t help or enhance the story at all. Especially in this case, it seems that they used it to mask the fact that there was no real storyline but just a bunch of half-baked sub-plots. And finally, that’s the last thing that bothered me. Indeed, there were way too many little stories going on and many were not interesting at all, especially the ones involving the boyfriend (his trip to Vegas or his work at the gym are just a few samples.) To conclude, it was not really a great movie, far from it, but there was still something quite mesmerizing about it and I think it is worth a look, especially if you are interested in Steven Soderbergh’s work.
6/10
