Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience ends with a scene of such raw intimacy that it's difficult to endure: In a back room of a store, an orthodox Jewish diamond vendor disrobes down to his undergarments, embraces high-priced escort Chelsea (adult-film star Sasha Grey), and, while doing little save hugging her, experiences something akin to a sexual climax or emotional breakdown.

It's uncomfortable and sad and weird and intense--and it's also the lone time human emotions are displayed so nakedly onscreen. The Girlfriend Experience--in escort parlance, a service for which the hired woman acts like the client's girlfriend--is Soderbergh's most fragmented, nonlinear story since The Limey, but also his most austere and uninviting. Girlfriend is less about Chelsea's life as an escort--in which she pretends to be for her client while she, perhaps, pretends to be in a real relationship with her boyfriend Chris (Chris Santos), a personal trainer--than it is visual exploration of economics. Set during October 2008, in the run up to the presidential election and the impending economic collapse, money is on everybody's mind: Chelsea's clients offer her financial advice, Chris shops for a better working environment, and Chelsea even meets up with an "escort reviewer"

 (film critic and Some Came Running blogger Glenn Kenny, in the movie's most deliciously seedy role) in hopes of raising her online profile and prices.

The entire movie, however, ends up feeling bloodless. By the time you piece together the story--Chris and Chelsea are redefining their relationship, she's going on a weekend with a client, he's heading to Vegas with one of his clients, she's being pursued by a journalist, she meets with clients, both new and established--any reason to care has been blunted by base economics. Girlfriend takes place in a New York where people are divided into two groups: those with money and those who service those with money. And while that may be an increasingly accurate portrayal of the American system, Soderbergh doesn't have much to say about it other than it exists.

In that regard, The Girlfriend Experience feels most indebted to Soderbergh's short-lived HBO series K Street, in which the facts and fictions of political lobbying collided and colluded to create weekly episodic television. That series had its fair share of hits and misses, but it also benefited from more experienced performers. Grey's Chelsea is little more than an empty vessel--perhaps the point, given that she's selling herself as a product of desire to be molded by the buyer--but because she never becomes more than an economic product, you never feel invested in her story. And while it's impressive that Soderbergh created a movie that doesn't judge a prostitute, he doesn't appear to care about her at all. She's merely another symptom of a greater economic catastrophe in which we're all potential victims.