The Girl­friend Expe­ri­ence is the best film about the finan­cial crash

Some guy just bought Chelsea lunch at Nobu. She lies back on a sofa in his hotel room and yawns while he orders Mac­Callan 25 whisky on room ser­vice. She’s wait­ing for his bloat­ed red fin­gers to undo the clasps on her Kiki De Mont­par­nasse corset, but he seems less inter­est­ed in her body than in com­plain­ing about his rapid­ly dwin­dling finan­cial investments.

This is a typ­i­cal scene in Steven Soderbergh’s The Girl­friend Expe­ri­ence, a slice-of-life dra­ma fol­low­ing a high-class escort in the days lead­ing up to the 2008 finan­cial crash. In the lead role is Sasha Grey, a retired porn star famed for lick­ing toi­let bowls and being con­demned on The Tyra Banks Show for sup­pos­ed­ly cor­rupt­ing impres­sion­able young girls. Despite her CV, those look­ing to The Girl­friend Expe­ri­ence for bared flesh and uhh-uhh-ahh moan­ing will be dis­ap­point­ed: the film is less about sex than the mon­ey that pays for it.

As Chelsea moves through anony­mous lux­u­ry flats and low-lit restau­rants, what unfolds is a som­bre med­i­ta­tion on how under cap­i­tal­ism every­thing is trans­ac­tion­al – even human emotion.

Less a par­ty than a wake, The Girl­friend Expe­ri­ence serves as a coun­ter­point to the cash-stuffed brief­cas­es and shiny Maser­atis of Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Thir­teen. You get the sense that the cor­rupt bank rob­bers of the director’s 2007 heist caper could stand in for the hedge fund man­agers of The Girl­friend Expe­ri­ence, because what dif­fer­ence does it make if your tak­ing mon­ey at gun­point or extort­ing it using impen­e­tra­ble div­i­dend for­mu­las? Either way, you’re tak­ing what is not yours.

Grey brings the same dead-eyed stare and nihilis­tic smirk to Soderbergh’s film as she does in My First Porn Film #7 and Bukkake Girls, but it’s a look well suit­ed to a char­ac­ter who spends her days cater­ing to oth­er people’s needs. Chelsea is the best girl­friend in the world – that’s why men pay her $2,500 a night. She can com­ment on the paint­ing meth­ods of a con­cep­tu­al art piece, she tops up her eye­shad­ow in the toi­lets before break­fast, and when you watch Man on Wire at the cin­e­ma togeth­er she can pro­vide engag­ing feed­back. She’s exact­ly what you want her to be, except her­self; you can’t pay her to be that.

The film posi­tions the finan­cial crash as an ever-present spec­tre in all human inter­ac­tions, as though the flick­er­ing dig­its of the mar­kets and the air-con­di­tioned con­fer­ence rooms have colour washed every­thing blue. Invest­ment bankers – as yet unknow­ing that they would still receive their mil­lion dol­lar bonus­es and Barack Oba­ma would bail them out – are wor­ry­ing about their Rolex­es and Hamp­tons hol­i­day homes.

In one scene, Chelsea undress­es in the stuffy back office of a dia­mond mer­chant shop while the own­er explains: ​“It’s very impor­tant that you vote for McCain, the state of Israel must con­tin­ue.” In anoth­er, she sits with a client on a rooftop gar­den, the two of them wear­ing fluffy white dress­ing gowns and drink­ing fresh­ly squeezed orange juice. ​“What about the bailout, how do you think that is going to turn out?” she asks him. ​“That’s not going to work, you need more mon­ey than the sys­tem is offer­ing,” he replies.

Mon­ey is not just a top­ic of con­ver­sa­tion, it moulds every rela­tion­ship so that every­thing becomes trans­ac­tion­al. Chelsea’s per­son­al train­er boyfriend, Chris (Chris San­tos), fist bumps his clients and tells them they look great and they take him on their pri­vate jet to Vegas. Chelsea goes to see a jour­nal­ist (played by actu­al New York Times Reporter Mark Jacob­son) pre­sum­ably for the free lunch. She sleeps with The Erot­ic Con­nois­seur, a sex work blog­ger, as he promis­es he take her to Dubai where men will pay $5,000 just to touch her hand. She assess­es whether men will be a ​“risky busi­ness deci­sion” by using per­son­ol­o­gy books. Even her rela­tion­ship with Chris seems man­u­fac­tured. She tells him about her client rela­tion­ships and he offers con­cil­ia­to­ry advice – there to lis­ten rather than artic­u­late his own fears and wants.

Despite Chelsea’s attempts to increase her stock price, this is a reces­sion and the num­bers are in freefall. She gets a bad review from The Erot­ic Con­nois­seur and not long after sees one of her reg­u­lar Johns out with anoth­er call girl. ​“She’s taller than me,” she seethes over a vod­ka ton­ic. Anoth­er guy Skype calls his kids and guilt push­es him to can­cel an appoint­ment. As the film pro­gress­es and Chelsea’s pop­u­lar­i­ty wanes, tight-lipped pro­fes­sion­al­ism gives way to para­noia and she becomes increas­ing­ly emo­tion­al. But even as she cries in taxis and buries her head in hands, we remain utter­ly uncon­vinced that she’s capa­ble of feel­ing any­thing but luke­warm numb­ness. This is prob­a­bly an acci­dent caused by Grey’s lim­it­ed act­ing expe­ri­ence, but it works, serv­ing to height­en the irre­deemable qual­i­ty of the narrative.

Chelsea might always be walk­ing around in Michael Kors dress­es, La Per­la under­wear and dia­mond ear­rings, or hir­ing web devel­op­ers to SEO her web­site to increase Google traf­fic, but she’s not the only per­son mon­etis­ing every aspect of her exis­tence. Her clients spend their off hours dis­cussing how to invest in gold, her boyfriend tries to sell sports­wear lines to a depart­ment store, or calls his clients ​“bro” before fist-bump­ing them so they pay for anoth­er block of 100 gym ses­sions. What The Girl­friend Expe­ri­ence expos­es is that in a post-Regan soci­ety there is a fun­da­men­tal act of barter at the base of all rela­tion­ships, under cap­i­tal­ism we are all sell­ing our­selves, Chelsea is just the only one being hon­est about it.