The Girlfriend Experience is one of those films that Steven Soderbergh likes to make between high-scale Hollywood fluff like Ocean’s 13 and more personal opuses like the four-hour Che bio-pic. Technically, it belongs amongst the filmmaker’s more experimental oeuvre, films like Bubble that attempted a multi-platform release back in 2005, one of only a handful of films to try a simultaneous release in theatres, on video and on demand television. Managing to be both intimate and disconnected at the same time, TGE tries to be an of-the-moment docudrama that features fictional characters played by what are essentially non-actors and shot in a very vérité style that has voyeuristic tendencies.

Of course such tendencies are nothing new to the man that made Sex, Lies and Videotape 20 years ago. One gets the feeling that Soderbergh is trying to recapture some of that magic by going even more lo-fi and getting ever more stalkerish with how he films and how we experience the characters. Unfortunately though, I think that the actors on screen are about as disconnected from their own characters as we as audience members feel from them. This can be inevitable, but not necessarily so when you take this approach. Look at the incredible work Gus Van Sant did in films like Paranoid Park and Elephant, two remarkable films for the way that non-experienced actors are able to perform it’s as if you’re watching “real people.” Which of course you are, but as anyone that’s ever been in front of a camera either purposefully or accidentally knows, to film something is often to change it.

The big change for The Girlfriend Experience is that it features adult film actress Sasha Grey. It’s not too far of a stretch for her as she plays Chelsea, a high class escort that specializes in offering “Johns” the, you guessed it, Girlfriend Experience. As in more than just sex, she offers companionship and stimulating conversation. Now Grey’s past film experience hasn’t exactly lent itself to subtlety having appeared in such titles as “House of Sex & Domination” and “Soloerotica 10,” but Grey herself demonstrates that there is something more to her than the average porn star. Her character seems cold and off-putting, perhaps as intended by the script and filmmaker, but I will say that I never found her unengaging. The acting style seems a bit unnatural, and that goes for all the actors, but for the most part it’s effective.

On the other hand, the screenplay tries a little too much to be in the now. I found the rambling discussions about the economy and the election tiresome, and they honestly didn’t add much to the conversation other than to ground the story in time and place. Much more interesting was this life Chelsea leads, one in which she’s a business woman first and an escort second. And Soderbergh isn’t exploitative of the fact that his leading lady obviously has no issue with nudity, and Chelsea’s rather clinical explanation of what she does on a specific “job” is fascinating and jarring. Adding another layer is the fact that Chelsea’s in a committed relationship with a personal trainer (Chris Santos), but other than the fact that their living in the same apartment, you’d be hard pressed to see a sign of any true intimacy between the two. One wonders if Chelsea is merely engaged in a kind of boyfriend experience on her end.

But while the film raises a lot of interesting little situations and story ideas for our characters to pursue, it feels like we barely scratch the surface. In fact, I’d be hard pressed to say that The Girlfriend Experience is anything but surface, like looking at a scene through a window and seeing the action but not hearing what anyone is saying. And the film ends in such an abrupt manner that as an audience member you’re not sure whether to leave or to laugh. There’s no natural resolution, not that you need everything to be wrapped up in a neat little package, but it just would have been nice to see all the elements brought together. What Soderbergh was trying to do here, I’m not sure. As a film experience, TGE can be kind of dull, but as an experiment in film though, it rather interesting. Go figure.