The Girlfriend Experience is one of Steven Soderbergh's bite-size, semi-improvised, shot-on-DV doodles (like Bubble or Full Frontal), and it's the best one he's made.

This film is true about human nature. It is not universal, but within its particular focus, it is unrelenting.

The smartest thing director Steven Soderbergh did in the making of The Girlfriend Experience was to cast Sasha Grey.

Fair warning: I had to see The Girlfriend Experience twice before its pieces settled into coherent shape.

The thinking behind Grey's casting, with its obvious sex-industry connections, lends the film a degree of verisimilitude, but it really pays off in a cameo by film critic Glenn Kenny, who brings a hilariously sleazy theatricality to the role of an "escort critic" who expects graft for his reviews.

Her beauty, independence, and stock portfolio notwithstanding, Chelsea's tale is a timely, tragic one told with typical Soderbergh finesse, a sly, sleek merger of sex, lies and hi def video.

This is one of the director's small, experimental, semi-improvised provocations, and if it doesn't push too deep, it's pointed enough to leave a mark.

Soderbergh's experiments are gripping -- the photography, music, wobbly chronology and so on -- but the movie is more of a curiosity than anything else.

Stands among the best of Soderbergh's many "little" films, where he recharges his artistic batteries and tries out new techniques before jumping back into the world of big budgets and superstars.

Stylishly shot on the high-def cheap, runs 77 potently sexless minutes. Its subject isn't erotica, it's commodities trading.

Voyeurism is a favorite pursuit of Americans, and The Girlfriend Experience works in large part because it indulges that pastime. The fascination with the film is that it offers an arm's-length opportunity to peer through a peephole into a lifestyle that will be exotic and alluring to most in the audience.

When the turmoil of the last 12 months has receded and the 10th-anniversary deluxe collectors edition comes around, this strange, numb cinematic experience may seem fresh, shocking and poignant rather than merely and depressingly true.

A modest success that makes one wish Soderbergh could find some happy middle ground between funky experiments and "Ocean's Eleven."

Fascinating study of free enterprise in free fall. While it may disappoint thrill-seekers, "Girlfriend" should still delight Soderbergh fans and niche auds.