You know how some men are just as good as women when portraying women and vice versa. Soderbergh isn’t one of those people in this film or Haywire, but I am also willing to say that maybe I don’t get it. Is The Girlfriend Experience an exegesis on the crisis of personal relationships (fitness trainer & trainee, high end call girl & her john, etc.) in the US & how they are commodified thus leaving everyone more insecure since they are dependent on money, not the people within the relationship for the connection? Maybe, but is it that Soderbergh’s visual style in this film reminded me of his shots in Haywire & I kept wondering: why? How does shooting the film this way move the story forward? The shooting style was discordant with the story in contrast to Contagion. I’m beginning to think that his early films were a fluke & he is not capable of thoroughly examining a single life or maybe that was the point in this film & he succeeded OR perhaps his attraction to pretty brunettes makes him incapable of telling a story that will be compelling for the audience. I think that it may be the latter because occasionally he touches on his characters’ vulnerability, particularly during scenes involving the idea of a reviewer of high end call girls, but somehow parts of it seem intensely cliche and stop too short. I know that it does not make me an expert, but after seeing documentaries of strippers and other sex workers and how they discuss their life, something about this film fell short while simultaneously feeling too ambitious. I think Soderbergh was trying to get at a national epidemic of insecurity & lack of connection, but didn’t even succeed at portraying the call girl’s experience.