Forget what you might have heard about "The Girlfriend Experience." While it's true that director Steven Soderbergh hired porn star Sasha Grey for the lead role of Chelsea, a high-priced Manhattan escort, there is no actual sex in the movie and very little nudity.

The deadly sin suffusing the film is not lust but greed. It's greed of an especially pertinent sort. The time-shuffled script is spread across the days before the recent presidential election. The men who pay Chelsea for the titular service of simulating romantic interest in them are wealthy Wall Streeters and show-business bigwigs who fret about the collapsing economy.

One of them, over a penthouse breakfast, advises the stylish beauty to invest in gold, and later she consults her accountant and a website designer for advice on maximizing her profits.

Chelsea's mirror image is her live-in boyfriend, Chris (Chris Santos). He's a gung-ho personal trainer who is continually trying to sweet-talk his clients into buying more sessions. A hedge-fund trader is so turned on by Chris' sales schtick that he flies him to Vegas on a private jet to serve as catnip on a tomcats' carouse.

Despite the sensual surroundings, "The Girlfriend Experience" maintains a cool temperature, both visually and emotionally. Although Chelsea finds herself attracted to the rare john who lends her a sympathetic ear, every hint of human warmth is deflected by Grey's opaque performance, the disconnected structure or, in the case of a wannabe pimp played by former Premiere film critic Glenn Kenny, an insulating layer of irony.

For my money, "The Girlfriend Experience" is a more successful dissection of human failings than Soderbergh's celebrated debut movie. Like an X-ray, the focused power of sex, lies and hi-def video cuts to the bone.