Who is Sasha Grey? I’m gonna go ahead and guess that it isn’t her birth name, but she’s a porn actress turned “mainstream” (-ish) star of Steven Soderbergh’s latest low-budget art-house release, “The Girlfriend Experience.” The movie is forgettable and to say that Grey underplays her part would be an understatement. She is a blank sheet of paper throughout, except during one minor conniption.
Yet — she’s got something. As frosty as she is, you don’t take your eyes off her. Could she be a studio movie star? Possibly. Quite possibly. You certainly don’t expect underacting from a porn star. It might be a more difficult trick to pull off than the opposite.
As my colleague Lou notes below, the most noteworthy thing about the movie apart from Grey’s presence in it is a brief but funny appearance by Glenn Kenny, the longtime Premiere writer who writes a highbrow film blog at somecamerunning. (Tune in there for full coverage of “The Girlfriend Experience,” which will be gone and forgotten in a couple of weeks.)
In the film, Kenny plays a sort of Jabba the Hutt of porn who all but licks his lips and drags Grey to him in chains. He makes her an offer to join him on a cocaine-fueled trip to the middle east — but first she must give him a freebie turn in the sheets so he can review her performance skills. If, as Lou writes, Kenny should lose 50 pounds, it would be excellent for his health but detrimental to his acting career. Acting is all about a look, and Kenny wouldn’t necessarily have a distinct one if he slimmed down.