'A FEW months ago, my wife said, 'Look at this Twitter from Sasha,'" says director Steven Soderbergh while discussing his new film, The Girlfriend Experience, starring adult film star Sasha Grey. "I told her I think porn stars should be the only people that Twitter. Now that's a good use of technology."
The 46-year-old director, responsible for films such as Sex, Lies, And Videotape, Out Of Sight, Erin Brockovich, Traffic, the Oceans franchise and the recent sprawling two-part epic Che, says: "We continually have these fantasies that technology will solve whatever societal problem we have that every generation buys into. I just wish it was being used to solve the really big problems."
The Girlfriend Experience reflects some of these anxieties, as well as others that come with living in the modern world. It follows Chelsea, a high-class call girl (Grey, in her mainstream film debut) for five days in the autumn of 2008, during that tumultuous period before the presidential election, and before the economy really started to crumble. Chelsea lives with her devoted personal-trainer boyfriend (Chris Santos), and she makes enough money that she can breeze into any SoHo shop and buy at will. But she's ambitious; she wants to expand. Enter the internet and all of its accessibility and sleaziness. "It's changed the business a lot," Soderbergh says of porn and the web. "It enables them to work entirely on their own. There isn't a fetish that exists that doesn't have a site for people to surf."
But The Girlfriend Experience is also about money – where to get it, how to keep it and mostly how to spend it.
Grey is a fascinating presence onscreen; where one would expect to see an actress emote, she's mesmerisingly opaque. "People are interested in this movie because of her, not me," says Soderbergh. "We're in awe of her status of porn diva. If I'd cast someone who had never been in front of a camera or a traditional actress, there wouldn't be this kind of discussion."
He became aware of her when he read about her in LA Magazine a few years ago. "She seemed like a new breed. I hadn't heard anybody in that industry talk the way she talked. She was a mould-breaker and she's only 21. She's very ambitious and very, very, savvy. It will be interesting to watch people try and wrap their minds about what she does. Because she does very extreme stuff. Our whole country is still confused about sex. It's everywhere but people are still upset about it."
Soderbergh points out the discrepancy between prostitution being illegal while women in the adult film business have sex for money too – just in front of a camera. "Are we ever going to have laws that are rooted in the way the world actually is and has been forever and will continue to be? It's time to have laws for the way people act – not the way we want them to act."
The Girlfriend Experience is at Edinburgh International Film Festival 24 June, 9.30pm and 27 June, 8.45pm. It is due to be released 20 November www.girlfriendexperiencefilm.com, www.eiff.co.uk