One of the favorite films of both Gyz and myself is the 1987 Oliver Stone classic Wall Street. Especially Gordon Gekko, innocence lost personified, portrayed by one excellent Michael Douglas (who for the first time in his career over-classes his dad, except for maybe ‘A Chorus Line’) is a class A movie personage and the film might not have been as good when someone else instead of Douglas would have been doin’ him, but hey… good casting is also good film making! If you’ve never seen Wall Street, go out and (tor)rent it, it just can’t disappoint.
You can imagine how thrilled we were when we found out couple months ago that the sequel was on its way and is to open in Rotterdam theaters some time (september) this year. Until… last night I saw it already by accident. Or actually I saw Steven Soderbergh’s ‘The Girlfriend Experience’, starring (a dynamite) Sasha Grey and furthermore mostly people playing themselves or kind of themselves. Soderbergh uses this people-playing-themselves-and-do-not-know-exactly-when-they’re-being-filmed-or-not technique to bring the realness of chaos in his films, which works out pretty well in both this film and Soderberghs often misunderstood masterpiece ‘Full Frontal’, which —I guess— best resembles TGE throughout his ‘body of work’ so far.
The Girlfriend Experience, about the growing smart of a two thousand dollar an hour escort isn’t so much about sex as it is about ‘the economy of modern day America triggered by the biggest crisis since last century’s thirties’, or about ‘transactions’, as Soderbergh says so himself in this Wall Street Journal interview. This and the fact that it seems the film’s made with the same nonchalance everyday life is being led these days (including how banks and corporations are leading their lives as if they’re adolescents having fun taking her easy) makes TGE the financial film of the times.
It’s not as interesting if you like top notch acting as it is when you’re down with spot on reflections of the human condition under, in this case, eerie economic pressure. In that light The Girlfriend Experience had also better gone for Wall Street 2’s tagline ‘Money never sleeps’ (quite the word play if you ask me), instead of the one they’re using now (probably aiming for a broad and pheromone driven target group) ‘see it with someone you ****’. Which, come to think of it, might just be some sort of contemporary joke on ‘love’ since there’s absolutely nothing to be X’ed going on in this film. Too bad, or maybe not, I don’t know. Maybe me getting my hopes up for ‘some of that’ is part of the Soderbergh experience as it did make me feel part of an absolutely sickening, or at least frightening, or at least pretty damn cold economy in a way, so…
Sasha Grey by the way is a stone fox. Just looking at her made my **** hurt… In a good way, though.
