Though he’s plenty busy tightening up The Argentine portion of his Che Guevara biopic for its big Cannes debut and prepping his agri-business whistle-blower drama, The Informant, Steven Soderbergh has somehow found the time to develop a second low-budget feature for HDNet. It’s called The Girlfriend Experience, and it will, on some level, be a slice-of-life drama about a high-priced (i.e. $10,000 a night) prostitute who offers the appearance of emotional intimacy as a means of heightening the sexual act. And I qualify that description because Soderbergh’s last HDNet effort, Bubble, was far more interested in aesthetics than its small town characters.
One of the more interesting aspects of Bubble was Soderbergh’s use of non-professional actors in such a rigorously stylized exercise. According to Variety, he may be furthering this experimentation with this latest film (though I’d hardly call an adult film actress an amateur performer). He’ll also be collaborating once again with Brian Koppelman and David Levien, who wrote the very entertaining Ocean’s Thirteen (easily the best of the series). You probably know them best as the poker-happy lads who tapped out Rounders.
Soderbergh has apparently already worked out the beat structure for The Girlfriend Experience with Koppelman and Levien, which is smart if he plans to knock this sucker out in fourteen days later this year. Here’s hoping he comes up with something more satisfying (intellectually or emotionally) this time out.