Victims of the economic meltdown have been all over the media -- over-extended young families, seniors, single moms, all cut loose and wondering how to feed themselves and keep a roof over their heads.

Somehow, amid all this, we've managed to ignore the "hit" that has been taken by the sybaritic filthy rich of the East and West coasts, and by the "full-experience" call-girls who soothe their fevered brows when the stress of being a "player" gets to be too much.

Not Steven Soderbergh, though. The Girlfriend Experience, his barely feature-length verite experiment, casts a real-life porn star, Sasha Grey as Chelsea, a call-girl/pretend-girlfriend whose line of work has her eating in the best restaurants and dressing in designer clothes -- all of which she itemizes aloud in narration, like entries in what one presumes is her diary. I say 'presume' because there are interrogative moments where Chelsea is being questioned and responding to people in the manner of a documentary interview.

There is a disembodied tone to Chelsea's delivery that is unmistakably that of a porn actress.

In fact, I've always wondered whether people act ineptly in porn films because it's a porn film and not a David Mamet play, or whether, in some cases, porn is a destination for people who can't act but still want to be "movie stars."

Grey would be evidence for the latter. Though a case could be made that her line of work "detaches" her from herself, there is a plot complication where she falls for a client and must have "the talk" with her live-in boyfriend Chris (Chris Santos), a high-priced physical trainer who is also experiencing severe income withdrawal. This clearly calls for a display of some kind of emotion, and yet Chelsea's voice remains as uninflected as ever.

Ironically, one of the sideplots in The Girlfriend Experience finds Chelsea falling in with a "callgirl reviewer," (played by real-life movie critic Glenn Kenny) a journalist of a sort who sleeps with (for free) and rates Chelsea and her colleagues as an online executive-tourist service.

The come-on is that a good review will do wonders for her career. The upshot is that he's kind of the Rex Reed of sex-reviewers -- nast-ay! On the other hand, it's kind of hard to disagree with his verdict of "boring."

This is a bad financial cycle for Chelsea all around, what with the lousy review, the fact that all her clients want to talk about anymore is the market crash (the same crash that's cutting into hers and Chris's business) and her discretionary lapse with Chris -- a betrayal that sees him accept a private jet trip to Vegas with some clients of his own.

As skeevy as all of this may sound, The Girlfriend Experience has very little actual sex and nudity (as was the case with his breakthrough indie flick Sex, Lies & Videotape).

Too much prurient interest would tend to detract from the important statement Soderbergh thinks he's making about the economy and society.

(This film is rated 14-A)

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