Girl$ Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		1.0
Video		3.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		1.5

Girl$ Blu-ray Movie Review

Paging Lena Dunham.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 16, 2013

Call me a cynic (you’ll have to get in a rather long line in order to be able to do that), but I have to wonder if the sudden appearance of Girl$ on Blu-ray might have something to do with a little Lena Dunham series that has become a pop culture phenomenon and one of HBO’s most talked about series in years. Dunham’s creation has been both lauded and derided for its frank dealings with sexuality, including copious nudity, so anyone who stumbles onto this release by mistake will have at least those two things to cling to since they're both featured rather prominently, even if they wish that this Girl$ had at least a little of Dunham’s wit and intelligence. This 2010 feature might have been one of those perfect Lifetime made for television movies, where a bunch of more or less innocent teenagers get swept into a life of prostitution, though Lifetime probably would have tended to disapprove of the film’s pretty kinky depictions of sex which are fairly liberally sprinkled through an otherwise turgid and overly melodramatic story. Girl$ is both intentionally provocative as well as really strangely cutesy in its approach to a rather serious subject. The first element comes courtesy of both the basic storyline as well as needlessly over the top aspects like a gruesome murder seen in the first few minutes (which turns out to be at best a tangential piece of an already overcrowded plot), while the second comes courtesy of things like the film’s title turning out to be a quasi-acronym for several of the main characters.

That acronym includes Gucci (Minyi Wang, who has evidently subsequently taken the name of Venus Wong), a young girl who finds herself deeply in debt due to her penchant for online bidding on designer handbags; Icy (Michelle Wai), another young girl who brings in some extra moolah by arranging so- called “Paid Dates” with a coterie of women she knows; Ronnie (Bonnie Xian), a well to do girl out for some kicks on the seedy side of life; and Lin (Una Lin), a promiscuous girl who has been plying her quasi-prostitution trade for some time. As in any good Lifetime-esque movie, this “odd quartet” of sorts become friends and the film follows their intersecting stories, even as the inherent danger in their lifestyles lurks menacingly in the background.

Girl$ boasts (if that’s the right word) four credited writers, and one begins to wonder if the quartet ever were in the same room with each other or instead communicated as the girls in the film often do, in Twitter-esque brief bursts of online chatter. This film is a pretty haphazard assortment of ideas. On the one hand it purports to be the melodramatic tale of four young girls living a hedonistic lifestyle that can only bring them pain, while on the other it almost has elements of a slasher film, especially due to the killer seen briefly in the opening sequence whose existence looms like a shadow in the background every time one of the girls arranges a new assignation. But then posited against that are just smarmy scenes like copious sex sequences between Ivy and her slacker boyfriend, not to mention the unsettling discovery by one of the other girls that her online date is actually her brother.

The film is awash in “jiggly cam” verité style filming techniques, putatively to give Girl$ a “you are there” ambience. But the storylines here are so preposterously stupid a lot of the time that any suspension of disbelief becomes next to impossible. There are copious shots of the bustling life of Hong Kong sprinkled rather liberally throughout the film, many with hordes of people passing by, and my hunch is many viewers will ultimately be hoping that the camera ends up following one of those folks rather than the quartet at the core of the film. Unfortunately, that never happens.

Girl$ Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Girl$ is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of the rather unlikely FUNimation Entertainment (a label which tends to specialize in anime rather than live action outings, let alone one of this dubious quality), with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This is one bafflingly schizophrenic looking high definition presentation, especially confounding since the film is of fairly recent vintage and was shot digitally. At one point things pop really well, with excellent fine detail, good color and pleasing contrast, while at another point, suddenly things get really ugly, with an unexpected softness, milky contrast and even artifacts like mosquito noise cropping up. My assumption is this film was done on a relatively paltry budget and there may have been little attempt to correct any perceived deficiencies in post production. As it stands this is a glass half full, glass half empty situation with regard to video quality, but considering how listless the actual film is, I seriously doubt few are going to care very much.

Girl$ Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Girl$ features a Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mix in Cantonese which is quite well done, at least in dribs and drabs. The urban scenes in crowded Hong Kong locations really bristle with sonic activity, much of which is splayed around the surround channels to offer pleasing immersion. The dialogue is almost resolutely anchored front and center and rarely if ever even shows much wide stereo separation. There are some interesting audio effects scattered through this enterprise which up the aural enjoyment significantly. Fidelity is excellent and dynamic range is relatively wide, though never extremely boisterous.

Girl$ Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• The Making of Girl$ is split into seven very short featurettes, all of which offer interviews, behind the scenes footage and snippets from the film. The breakdown is as follows:

  1 (480i; 2:52)

  2 (480i; 2:07)

  3 (480i; 00:51)

  4 (480i; 1:08)

  5 (480i; 00:55)

  6 (480i; 1:16)

  7 (480i; 1:37)

Girl$ Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Girl$ just kind of lies there waiting for something to happen. Unfortunately, not very much ever does. This film is pretty ineptly written with a lot of risible dialogue spouted by a "not ready for prime time" cast (some of whom have never acted before, and it shows), as well as too many cutesy video effects for its own good and a really inconsistent tone and focus that make it a pretty dull watch, despite copious nudity and lots of simulated sex. (You know you're in trouble when even the sex scenes come off as boring.) FUNimation Entertainment followers who are aficionados of what anime lovers call "fan service" may want to check this out, though what's here is actually closer to hentai. All others should stick with Lena Dunham and HBO.