I generally don't blog reviews much (actually, I don't blog much about anything) but I just went to the premiere of Steven Soderbergh's new film at the Tribeca Film Fest last night. And I'm not entirely sure what I think of it.

There's been quite a bit of hype surrounding Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience, primarily due to his casting of "it girl" porn star Sasha Grey in the lead, in addition to a cast comprised primarily of non-actor friends of the director who mostly improvised their dialogue. While TGE isn't nearly as bad as that recipe for disaster might turn out, it isn't exactly good, either.

I'm of decidedly mixed feelings. It kept my attention for its (rather short) running time. I was never bored, but I was rarely truly engaged, either. The story isn't much on paper - a week in the life of Christine, a/k/a Chelsea, a high-end escort. The story, though, at times seems merely a vehicle for Soderbergh and his writers to make political points. Very little is talked about in this film besides the economy, and, in a move guaranteed to shorten this film's relatability to the next decade at most, the 2008 election. The wealthy men who pay for Chelsea's services bitch and moan about the market, Obama, how they're going to make ends meet - all the while shelling out $3,000 / hr for an escort. They take her to the hautest of NYC restaurants, stay in the most spectacular hotels, and dole out investment advice. We are, one assumes, supposed to have contempt for these people, and we do. Yet all the while, you can't help but hear that little voice in the back of your head, reminding you that tomorrow for lunch, Soderbergh will very likely be dining in those very restaurants. That he, and his friends, stay in those very luxury hotels when they're in town.

Christine buys the most expensive clothes, and rattles off her purchases in deadpan voiceover. At one point, I wanted to find the screenwriters and remind them that Bret Easton Ellis used the same gimmick in American Psycho twenty years ago. The clothes, the restaurants, the visible signifiers of wealth. There is a fine line which Soderbergh tries to dance - on the one side, we hate these people. On the other, we feel jealousy. We can't help but want their easy lives, these men who can spend in a day what most of us make in a year. And because the filmmakers are, at least from an economic standpoint, of that same set, it becomes difficult to separate them from the characters they ask us to despise.

The cast is, by and large, surprisingly good for a group of non-actors. Though a small amount of research reveals that the story behind the film is just that, a story. While many of the actors are truly first-timers, there are a few who've been here before. Timothy Davis has an extensive stage resume, though this is his first film. Timothy Cox has had a number of small parts on TV, as has Jeff Grossman. Peter Zizzo has appeared in commercials for Tony Robbins, and is an experienced public speaker, giving seminars on the music industry and songwriting. While TGE provides the largest roles for any of them. they are hardly first-timers.

But everyone wants to know - Sasha Grey. The star-on-the-rise. How is she? Well, that's a complicated matter.

In some ways, especially as the film begins, she is the perfect actress for the role. As she wanders from client to client, her expression rarely changes. Faux interest in their conversation, revealing nothing about herself, essentially providing a blank soundboard for their desires. She has no personality of her own. That is, after all, her job. Woven throughout the film we see a journalist (played by veteran journo Mark Jacobson) interviewing her, at yet another terribly expensive Manhattan restaurant. He tries to break her facade, to reveal the Christine behind the Chelsea, but she won't budge. She treats the journalist as if he's another client.

Perhaps that's all we should see of Chelsea. Perhaps the movie should have simply been about this blank, female Patrick Bateman. Unfortunately, where the movie both stumbles and achieves its greatest triumph is with the story of Christine.

It stumbles because, quite frankly, Sasha Grey is not up to the task. When her facade breaks it is only the words she says - not in her voice, her mannerisms, her eyes. While perfectly cast as Chelsea, she is sorely lacking as Christine.

Not up to the task yet, perhaps. Mind you, I don't want to denigrate Sasha Grey here. She may have the makings of a good actress in her. I find her an interesting person, culturally - how many 21 year olds, let alone porn stars, will cite Throbbing Gristle as one of their greatest influences? She's no empty-headed bimbo, nor would I ever suggest such. I suppose a lot of people are going to come away from this film saying she was great - but, let's be honest, that's in a very specific context. Great... for a porn star. For a non-actor. She certainly doesn't bring the film down, but she doesn't lift it up either. Maybe given a few more supporting roles, working across from some good actors, she could develop into something pretty good. But carrying a film like this would be a stretch for any actor, let alone a first-timer. One could easily imagine an Anne Hathaway or Natalie Portman knocking this role out of the park, being truly "great" in it.

The triumph of this film, on the other hand, is relative newcomer (he was in one other film, but that was in 1993) Chris Santos. As Christine's suffering boyfriend, Chris, he turns in an award-worthy performance. In many ways, he is the true lead of the film. One could interpret the title as being about his "Girlfriend Experience" as much as any other meaning the phrase has. Chris is a personal trainer, just trying to make ends meet, and being much more understanding about his girlfriend's career than most men would be. We watch him struggle with his economic and personal woes, and he's never less than genuine, subtly commanding every frame he's in. Simple scenes - asking his boss for a raise, trying to sell a client at the gym on a bigger workout package - ring as heartbreakingly true as any Cassavetes working-class drama.

These moments are juxtaposed with Christine's own efforts to increase her value. She works with a developer to increase traffic to her website. She talks to an accountant about investment opportunities. She goes to an escort "critic" - of who I'll discuss more later. Christine, like Chris, worries about her future. Are we are supposed to sympathize with her in the same way? It's very difficult when she still goes shopping at Michael Kors and Costume National. She is, in many ways, not that different from and just as contemptible as her clients. She talks of investing, of the future, yet she spends willy-nilly on staggeringly expensive ephemeral things. All this serves to do is make Chris' struggle all the more poignant. He, like most Americans, is not of the investor class. He lives hand-to-mouth. He does not have extra money to "invest" in anything. Chris, in the end, is the character the audience relates to. At least those of us not from Hollywood.

In what amounts to the plot, Christine falls for one of her clients. We learn, in bits and pieces, that our heroine is fascinated with something called "Personology" - a mish-mash of Astrology and other new-agey things that, she believes, can predict whether someone will be good or bad for her. She avidly reads books on the subject, and will reject clients with incompatible birthdays. Her falling for this client has less to do with him, personally - she only meets him once, and immediately agrees to go on a weekend trip with him - but that his birthday is compatible with hers on her charts. Never mind that, for all she knows, he could be a serial killer. She puts such blind trust in her charts that - in a subtle aside one could easily miss - we find out that, after one session, she has told this client her real name, and given him her real phone number.

In the scene that best exemplifies my mixed feelings on this movie, Chris confronts her on her weekend getaway plans. They have an agreement - it can't be easy being the boyfriend of a whore, after all - no trips with clients. Let alone one that she wants to "pursue something" with. She is going to destroy their relationship for a guy she has met only once. A man who is married with two children, no less.

Santos is electrifying. Grey is inanimate. This is a woman who is apparantly going to destroy her one real relationship for something that is most assuredly going to fail. Yet her delivery is matter-of-fact. Running off with this client, she doesn't come off so much driven as programmed to do it. When Chris talks trash on her "books" - her personology tomes, the one thing in her life she appears to have some passion for - her indignation comes off flat, bored. She is as passionless about her passions as she is about her clients. To top it off, the way it is shot, we don't even see Grey through most of it. She sits on the floor, behind a chair, blocking our view of her. We only hear her voice. For this scene, the climax of the film, Soderbergh has made his actress not just emotionally but visibly absent.

The director does manage to eke the waterworks from his star, though. She relates the story of a terrible experience with "The Erotic Connoisseur" - a Jabba-the-Hut-esque man who runs an escort review blog so revered by the Johns of the world that a thumbs up or down from him can make or break an escort's career. But the story she relates, that drives her to tears, is sadly kind of boring. Really? This was the worst experience she's ever had with a John? While it sounds a bit uncomfortable, I know girls who've had worse experiences on dates. In fact, Chelsea's workdays are so easy, one might come away from this film thinking the life of a whore was mostly sunshine and roses.

The critic is played by Glenn Kenny, the former film critic for Premiere magazine, in a hilarious performance that is obviously meant as a dig against his own profession. And while he's very funny, it is sadly these kind of heavy-handed self-indulgent "inside baseball" references that occasionally sink The Girlfriend Experience. Soderbergh doesn't like critics? Wow, go figure. And in case you missed the point, let's have the soundtrack be two hipster street musicians playing a song called "Everybody's a Critic" - c'mon, Steve, you can be a bit more subtle than that.

In an interesting sociological comparison, I noticed that the laughs from the "VIP" section of the theater - the filmmakers, their friends, etc - were much louder during these moments than for those of us in the general admission seating. On the other hand, when Kenny, in voice-over, gives his scathing review of Chelsea, the common folk got their biggest laugh of the night: (paraphrasing) "she might be good playing the goth girl, or the the girl-next-door, but instead she tries to pass herself off as something 'sophisticated'." - he could just as easily have been describing most people's view of Sasha Grey herself.

I guess my problem with this film is - who is it for? What is it saying? It's obviously trying to say something, not just present us with a slice of life. It isn't really a character study, since Christine/Chelsea has very little character. So what are Soderbergh and the writers (SS says it was largely improvised, but there are two writers credited) trying to get at? To use the high-class call girl business as a way to expose the differences between the haves and have-nots? In that sense, it works, but only in the way that someone very wealthy saying "I feel your pain" can - it can't help but ring false, no matter how sincere, because they can't feel our pain. They're not wondering how they're gonna pay the bills. The film is parade of the director's rich industry friends, eating in expensive restaurants, wearing expensive clothes. Is he pointing the finger at himself, then? Is "Chelsea" the filmmakers' blank-canvas whore, on whom they can reflect whatever it is they want to hear back about themselves?

Or does Soderbergh see himself as Christine? Whoring himself out to Hollywood, but in the service of something greater? Building himself up to the point where he can make his own films on his own terms - where the boutique Christine dreams of opening is a metaphor for The Girlfriend Experience itself. Casting "The Critic" as the villain lends credence to that theory. And it might work, except Soderbergh has never whored himself to Hollywood. He's never done a project that wasn't 100% Soderbergh-approved. Even his most commercial films - the Ocean's series - are very much products of his.

Or is the movie itself Christine? In a sense, the great flaw of this movie may be that, like Christine, while beautiful and well made, it just isn't anything. The various interpretations one will hear will likely reflect more about the viewer than the film. The Hollywood insiders in the VIP seats certainly had different reactions than the proles in the audience. Was The Girlfriend Experience a 1.7 million dollar whore, given to us (well, for 15 bucks) to see what we want/need to see in it?

One could make the argument that this open interpretation is the genius of the film. And it certainly provides for lively conversation. But none of the interpretations make for a particularly interesting film. Imagine a big, overstuffed enchilada, full of ingredients and lots of textures but lacking in any flavor. It's up to you, the eater, to add the salsa, guacamole, whatever you like. And then all it tastes like is what you added. One leaves the table full, but not satisfied.

Like a good whore, one imagines, it keeps you entertained for a bit, but it doesn't mean anything more than what you let it. Those who find something deeper only do because they want something deeper.

Or perhaps I'm over-analyzing, and the film was what it appeared to be at its most base interpretation. The final shot might sum it up for many viewers: A shlubby middle-aged Jew, who paid a lot of money for the privilege, slobbering over the beautiful shiksa body of Sasha Grey. Maybe that's really all we saw.