Girlfriend Experience, The

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

The Girlfriend Experience is one of Steven Soderbergh's bite-size, semi-improvised, shot-on-DV doodles (like Bubble or Full Frontal), and it's the best one he's made.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

This film is true about human nature. It is not universal, but within its particular focus, it is unrelenting.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

The smartest thing director Steven Soderbergh did in the making of The Girlfriend Experience was to cast Sasha Grey.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Fair warning: I had to see The Girlfriend Experience twice before its pieces settled into coherent shape.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

The thinking behind Grey's casting, with its obvious sex-industry connections, lends the film a degree of verisimilitude, but it really pays off in a cameo by film critic Glenn Kenny, who brings a hilariously sleazy theatricality to the role of an "escort critic" who expects graft for his reviews.

Film Threat Rick Kisonak

Her beauty, independence, and stock portfolio notwithstanding, Chelsea’s tale is a timely, tragic one told with typical Soderbergh finesse, a sly, sleek merger of sex, lies and hi def video.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

This is one of the director's small, experimental, semi-improvised provocations, and if it doesn't push too deep, it's pointed enough to leave a mark.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Soderbergh's experiments are gripping -- the photography, music, wobbly chronology and so on -- but the movie is more of a curiosity than anything else.

TV Guide Perry Seibert

Stands among the best of Soderbergh's many "little" films, where he recharges his artistic batteries and tries out new techniques before jumping back into the world of big budgets and superstars.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Stylishly shot on the high-def cheap, runs 77 potently sexless minutes. Its subject isn't erotica, it's commodities trading.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Voyeurism is a favorite pursuit of Americans, and The Girlfriend Experience works in large part because it indulges that pastime. The fascination with the film is that it offers an arm's-length opportunity to peer through a peephole into a lifestyle that will be exotic and alluring to most in the audience.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

When the turmoil of the last 12 months has receded and the 10th-anniversary deluxe collectors edition comes around, this strange, numb cinematic experience may seem fresh, shocking and poignant rather than merely and depressingly true.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

A modest success that makes one wish Soderbergh could find some happy middle ground between funky experiments and "Ocean's Eleven."

Variety Ronnie Scheib

Fascinating study of free enterprise in free fall. While it may disappoint thrill-seekers, "Girlfriend" should still delight Soderbergh fans and niche auds.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Grey isn't the first porn actress to go straight, but she may be the first to allegorize her own situation--projecting an on-screen self-confidence that’s indistinguishable from pathos.

Washington Post Jan Stuart

The film manages a career-spanning panache: Soderbergh taps into the nervy impulses of his earliest endeavor, "sex, lies and videotape" as well as "Ocean's Eleven." The Girlfriend Experience has something to elevate and exasperate fans of both.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Moderately compelling and clinical. This isn't "Breakfast at Tiffany's"; this isn't even "Klute."

USA Today Claudia Puig

It's hampered by a listless quality and a one-note performance by porn-star-turned-actress Sasha Grey.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

The effect is impressionistic and provocative, with the emphasis falling differently on scenes because of our knowledge or lack thereof.

Slate Dana Stevens

Though the result is thematically slight, it's structurally sophisticated enough to reward a second viewing (or at least, unlike Grey's previous work, to be watched all the way through).

Empire Kim Newman

Good central performances but short on plot.

Los Angeles Times Robert Abele

A compelling monotony, but one that's never quite pleasure, never quite pain and, therefore, never quite an experience.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

The Girlfriend Experience uses nonprofessional actors, aside from lead Grey, who is the acclaimed star of more than 80 porn films and here debuts in her first "nonadult" role.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

Most of the dialogue is listless, and no matter how much Soderbergh snips and stitches, the movie is a corpse with twitching limbs.

New York Daily News Joe Neumaier

Nowhere near as kinky or thinky as Soderbergh’s "sex, lies and videotape," Girlfriend pretends it has more on its mind than it really does.

New York Post Kyle Smith

Time for another of Steven Soderbergh's "experimental," i.e., half-assed, films.