Chelsea works hard on her career as a high-class companion playing the perfect girlfriend for clients willing to pay $2,000 an hour. Together with her boyfriend, who has no problem with Chelsea's profession, she lives in a luxury apartment in New York. This lovely little movie seems to mark for blockbuster maker Steven Soderbergh a return to "Sex, Lies, and Videotape", his debut feature film shot at the age of 26. Sasha Grey, a 22-year-old American top star in the porn business, doesn't need sophisticated acting skills to play Chelsea, while the dialogues are extracted from the actors' free conversations. The American presidential election and economic crisis just around the corner (we're in October 2008), along with deliberately jumpy, documentary-like camera work, make the movie real enough to give the viewer the feeling of being right there with the coolest people in the hottest places of NYC.

By Maru July 9, 2010